


Of a Linear Circle - Part IX - Serpent in the Grass

by flamethrower



Series: Of a Linear Circle [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Dursleys, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BSL is hella useful, Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Death Eaters, Don't copy to another site, Don't forget to Punch a Nazi, European Wizarding War, F/F, F/M, Family Secrets, First British Wizarding War, GFY, Good Slytherins, Healthy Relationships, I couldn't ignore it but I also couldn't handle that level of horror right now, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape Friendship, Loving Marriage, M/M, Magical Adoption, Multi, Other, Polite use of Historical Figures, Politics, Polyamory, Spying, The Order of the Phoenix - Freeform, The Underground, Time Travel, World War II, a fancy name for a wizarding witness protection program, also holy shit Wizarding Britain let's talk about expanding your family bush a little bit there, an immortal idiot, as of 1996 not so much, brief references to the Holocaust, canon events, hello have a moist barrel of feels, hidden identities, historical events, non-canon relationships, not to mention all the Death Eater connections, once upon a time there really were a lot of Weasleys, portraits with vital roles, smart people making daft decisions, the Black family used to have an actual tree but they like to pretend its a bush, the Taboo Curse is a pain in the arse, the number of family trees I built for this fic is kind of appalling, too many fucking Death Eaters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:41:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 41
Words: 364,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25477843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower
Summary: By the time the 20th century arrived, Salazar Slytherin had a plan. Truly, he did--or as much of a plan as one could have when the people involved in said plan didn't exist yet.Fate and/or the chaotic nature of the universe and/or the gods fucking with him? They had other ideas.
Relationships: Alice Longbottom/Frank Longbottom, Arthur Weasley/Molly Weasley, Charlus Potter/Dorea Black, Fleamont Potter/Euphemia Pryce, Henry Potter/Elizabetha Fleamont, Ignatius Prewett/Lucretia Black Prewett, James Potter/Lily Evans/Sirius Black, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Mary Macdonald/Marlene McKinnon, Minerva McGonagall/Elphinstone Urquart, OMC/OFC, OMC/OMC, Past Salazar Slytherin/Isis Ataullah, Past Salazar Slytherin/OFC, past Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald - Relationship
Series: Of a Linear Circle [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/755028
Comments: 3705
Kudos: 2013
Collections: א and ב+





	1. This Bloody Century

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, I started writing by placing the opening setting of this part in 1981. Then my brain said, "Wait, what about THIS" and then I was starting it in 1975. Then I started writing more and suddenly was wandering around lost somewhere in the first half of the 20th century, wondering wtf just happened. I didn't actually WANT to deal with two different wars happening on top of each other...
> 
> I do not consent to my work being reposted or used in any unofficial apps or other websites. This work is not posted for anyone's profit.   
> This work should only be found and read on https://archiveofourown.org (AO3).

Salazar has been living in the Willow House in Sherwood-on-the-Marsh since the 1600s, but he doesn’t bother changing anything about it but for the plumbing until telephones become common. After that, it’s electricity, because torches and candles are nice, but electricity might be useful. Maybe.

He decides he’s not much impressed by electric lighting, but a wireless qualifies quite nicely. What he doesn’t expect is how _fast_ everything happens. He thought the last few decades of the previous century were bad for sudden, constant changes in human invention, but the 20th century seems intent on being ever faster. Many things are larger, greater—including the wars.

Wireless radio exchanges become programs, which quickly expand to story serials, sporting events, news broadcasts, and record programs. Curiosity drives him to purchase a radiogram when he realizes someone has combined a wireless and a gramophone into a single, polished wooden bit of furniture. This one is capable of playing the newer vinyl records where a gramophone’s steel needle cannot.

Salazar won’t miss shellac records, but the change to plastic makes him shake his head. He coughed his way through the so-called Industrial Revolution. While there are many resulting benefits, he’s not certain that such a speedy transition to factory production was worth the ill health and poor conditions that now plague humanity, plants, and wildlife alike.

“Ah, pollution,” Nizar’s 992 portrait comments from his worn frame.

“Tell me it gets better.”

Nizar snorts. “You want me to lie to you, then?”

“Never mind.”

World War I helped _nothing_ in that regard. Salazar hasn’t been able to stand the idea of going to Europe since the Armistice. The earth beneath his feet screams, never stopping, from all that was so abruptly and terribly done to her. Blood and metal, forests decimated, chemical warfare—mankind has yet to stop learning of new ways to do terrible things to each other.

In particular, fuck mustard gas. Salazar has not had such a terrible wound that took so long to heal since Antioch Peverell attempted to murder him with the bloody Elder Wand. The stupid crossbow bolt through the eye was far easier to cope with in comparison, even if certain painted beings still think the event hilarious—though if not for a nearby healer’s magic, Salazar imagines it would not be remembered quite so fondly.

The experimental wireless-based broadcasts of something called television intrigue him, though Salazar would have to go into London to see the results. As the first televisions are sold, Nizar tells him to hold off on acquiring one, suggesting he wait until the 1960s.

“What will be so special about a television by the 1960s?”

“Not sure.” Nizar lounges across his chair on his back, his hair brushing the floor on one side, his feet supporting him on the other, in a clear sign of boredom. “I think maybe that’s when it starts broadcasting in color.”

“Colorful, moving, broadcasted images.” Salazar blows out a long breath. Gods, but Rowena would be fascinated to see the reason why his little brother’s _Recordari_ charms were always so different. “I’ll most likely be purchasing one sooner than that, if only out of curiosity.” A monochromatic moving image viewable at home is still just as fascinating in concept, even if he has advance warning of its creation thanks to a portrait’s recorded memories.

“What do you know of Grindelwald?”

Nizar’s portrait lifts his head from the floor and glances at him. “The name sounds a bit familiar. Hold on.”

“We have time,” Salazar says, knowing from experience that it can often take the portrait a while to find the earliest things it magically recorded, which would be his actual brother’s own memories. There is quite a bit that the portrait recorded on its own afterwards, century by century. By now, Salazar thinks the portrait’s recorded experiences likely make it unique among magical paintings.

Salazar returns from the kitchen with a cup of tea to find the portrait sitting up on his chair. “I’m not certain about this,” Nizar says warningly, “because that fucking book was the best cure for insomnia money could buy, and it didn’t even cost all that much. I think Grindelwald is mentioned in _Hogwarts: A History_.”

Salazar frowns. “I’ve heard tell that such a titled book will be published at some point this year. It should be available by now.”

“I honestly cannot believe it’s already 1936.”

“Some days I find it difficult to contemplate the same.” Salazar sips at the tea, strong and bitter. Several hundred years have passed, and still the British are too busy destroying the benefits of tea’s tannic acid with milk and sugar to realize that there are other sorts of teas to be had aside from grass-flavored green and highly astringent black. “I suppose I should purchase this book.”

Nizar’s eye tics before his entire expression twitches. “Sal, please do the entirety of Wizarding Britain a favor: do not read that book until you’ve no choice in the matter.”

“That bad, is it?”

Nizar rolls his eyes. “You’re a historical villain to all except the students of our own House, remember?”

“Yes, but I’ve grown used to that,” Salazar points out. It does help quite a bit that he hasn’t used his own name in public for a very long time.

“You would tear down the entire Ministry for what that book says about Helga alone.”

Salazar pauses, staring at the portrait, before he swallows the tea in his mouth. “Perhaps I will _not_ be purchasing this book. Have you recalled anything about this Grindelwald yet? I only know what the papers have reported, and none of it is promising.”

“I know that, for some reason, Albus Dumbledore defeats Grindelwald in a duel, but that didn’t come from the book. That was on a Chocolate Frog card. No, you probably don’t want to know,” Nizar adds.

“Chocolate frogs.” Salazar shakes his head. “It sounds as if Britain’s magicians decide to focus on silly nonsense.”

“People do weird shit, Sal. That’s nothing new.” Nizar frowns. “Besides, I think the information you’re wanting wasn’t in the first printing. I remember noticing once that the Hogwarts library copy only had the title on the front, but the copy I purchased had something on it about being revised with new information in 1947.”

“Bugger,” Salazar mutters. That sounds very much as if the situation he’s watching unfold in Europe will have quite the historical impact.

“Forget the _Prophet_ and that stupid book. What do the European newspapers say about Grindelwald, Sal?”

“The last delivery I received from France was a mixture of tales,” Salazar replies. “The non-magical and magical communities alike are fearful of the power that Germany has gained for itself. It hasn’t been long enough since the Great War for them to not be concerned by such. Grindelwald seems to be using the distraction to rally like-minded magicians to his cause, and that cause is domination. He wishes for magicians to rule over the non-magical.”

Nizar rolls his eyes. “Sounds like a wonderful guy. I thought it bad enough that Voldemort begins at Hogwarts in two years.”

“It does make me suspect that Grindelwald will be leaving behind the blueprints for a young madman to follow.”

It hadn’t taken long to find the child who will one day choose the name Voldemort. Nizar had once been able to dig the name of Voldemort’s father out of a jumble of terrified recollection from a base necromancy ritual. Salazar found the non-magical Riddles in the quiet village of Little Hangleton, which was still rife with the gossip that the Riddle family’s only son had once run off with a woman of questionable origins before returning with claims that he’d been led astray by lies.

Salazar’s heart jolted uncomfortably in his chest the first time he saw non-magical Tom Riddle, now in his early thirties and still a handsome specimen of a man. The son grows up to look very much like his non-magical father; both have black hair and pale skin, though the elder Riddle didn’t have his son’s blue eyes.

Riddle is not an entirely uncommon name, but Little Hangleton also supplied Salazar with a place and a year for Voldemort’s birth: 1926, London. The files in the Ministry were useless, with no records of Merope’s education, employment, or current address. Salazar turned to the non-magical registries and records, though it took a while to seek out the place where Merope Gaunt birthed her son, named him—and breathed her last, not long after.

Tom Marvolo Riddle was born on the 31st of December, the last day of a dying year before the birth of a new one. Salazar is not one to think of birthdates as portents, but perhaps there are exceptions.

Young Riddle still resides in the place of his birth, Wool’s Orphanage. Salazar needed no tour or personal introduction to find the child in early 1934. He’d idly stood and watched the small, fenced-in play area outside the orphanage, looking for dark heads of hair and pale skin until his eyes landed on Tom Marvolo Riddle. He’d been seven years old at the time, but the other orphans avoided him. Teenagers still consigned to life in an orphanage were afraid of an undersized child; the staff running the orphanage refused to meet Tom Riddle’s gaze.

Salazar was most often of the belief that children had to grow and learn to become monsters, but that child’s eyes were just as cold, just as heartless—just as bloody fucking _terrifying_ —as those he’d once glimpsed in the water when a young man wearing a Hogwarts uniform committed murder.

He studies his brother’s portrait, noting Nizar’s expression. He knows what that look signifies. “There is going to be another war, isn’t there?”

Nizar hesitates before nodding. “Yes.”

“Worse than the Great War?” Salazar asks. Last year, the Italians invaded Ethiopia. In July, Spain faltered and finally plunged itself into a civil war that has been long in brewing, and he fears it will become bloodbath enough to compete with the _Reconquista_. Germany cut itself from Spain and Italy’s new fascist cloth when it elected Adolf Hitler.

The League of Nations passed a useless Neutrality Act while Germany united its goals first with Italy, then with Japan. China has managed to unite itself to fend off the Japanese Empire’s desire to claim it, but they are already in desperate need of aid that none seem prepared to provide.

Perhaps he is asking his brother’s portrait a stupid question. War is already occurring.

Nizar’s portrait considers Salazar for a minute. “Bear in mind that this is a recorded memory of a faded primary school education that I suspect was not very good in the first place. I tended to read more about science than history…but yes, I think it will be worse. No, I don’t recall when it begins or how it ends, but if Dumbledore has to go to Europe to duel Grindelwald when he can hardly be bothered to leave Britain, you might be looking at two different wars happening right on top of each other.”

“This bloody century,” Salazar mutters, meaning it literally. He will not realize his words are a terrible precognition of what is to come until several years later, and still the worst of it had not yet occurred.

In 1937, Japan again invades China and takes her former capital for itself. The Soviet Union immediately betrays its proclaimed intention to ally with Germany and Japan to instead aid China, most likely in recognition of the fact that China is their first land-based defence against a Japanese invasion from the south. The Japanese Empire is constantly attacking the Soviet coastline, both with the desire to conquer and in anger that their efforts to control China are being thwarted by Soviet assistance. The Chinese welcome their Soviet allies until they realize that the Soviets are claiming parts of their own country as their own. That then becomes its own very special sort of disaster.

Salazar rests his hands over his face as he listens to the news through the wireless. Why is it when men lose their minds, that madness so easily spreads?

In 1938, a united Italy and Germany annexes Austria. Nothing is done to stop them. They move on to stake their claim on part of Czechoslovakia. Still nothing is done but for France and Prime Minister Chamberlain willfully conceding the territory to Germany, ignoring the protests of Czechoslovakia herself. Then the rest of the country is split in two, with part given to Hungary and the rest claimed by Poland.

Grindelwald uses these many distractions to build a massive fortress in Germany, calling it Nurmengard. Salazar reads of the name in a quiet article from a magical newspaper out of Belgium and feels a chill of premonition.

 _The Nuremberg_ _rallies_ , he realizes. Gellert Grindelwald has named his home in reflection of the city that hosts Germany’s yearly Nazi rallies. It is also the place where the recent Nuremberg Laws were passed, revoking the citizenship of every Jewish person in Germany. They have since been fleeing the country in droves, oftentimes to no avail. Desperate people are turned away at the borders of other countries for no reason other than the convenient politics of accepted bigotry.

“What the bloody hell is _wrong_ with everyone?” Salazar wonders aloud. “Why are they committing all of these sacrifices, especially when their sacrifices are people who are not themselves?”

“They’re thinking on how much they don’t want another world war,” Nizar’s portrait says irritably. “They’ll give little thought as to who lives and who dies as long as there are no trenches dug and no machine guns to face. They’re just too bloody short-sighted to realize that it’s already too late.”

Salazar gives in and goes to France in 1939, intent on visiting his contacts in Beauxbatons. Instead of a school preparing for a new term, he finds a shelter preparing for war.

“Of course it’s a shelter!” Elise Mercier says to him in disbelief. “Do you not read the newspapers in your country, Saul Luiz?”

Saul grimaces. “I read every newspaper in Europe as well as those of Britain, Headmistress. What is happening?”

“You know there will be war. Yes?” Elise asks.

“Yes. One that is likely to eclipse the previous one that enveloped the Continent, which is a terrible thing to contemplate.”

“Exactly so,” Elise responds, sniffing once before directing her conscripted assistants, older students and teachers alike, to continue their efforts. “Beauxbatons has been well-hidden since it first opened its doors, Saul. It will remain so, but I will not stand by and watch as others suffer. School will continue, as our students will be safer here than they will be if they remain in their homes, but the dormitories will be crowded this year. According to our Seers, they will be crowded for many years to come. Thus, we act now to adjust.” Elise turns back to face him. “Why are you here? Why are you not in Poland?”

“I left Britain early this morning.” He’d arrived not to feel the earth beneath his feet echoing the damage from the Great War, but to an intense, watchful silence. “What has happened in Poland?”

Elise sighs and Summons a copy of that morning’s _Des Temps Magiques_. “See for yourself.”

Salazar blinks at the front page for a few moments after reading the brief article. “That explains why I felt it should be first September, then,” he murmurs.

Germany and its European allies have just invaded Poland.

“I would say that they cannot do such a thing, but I’m not that sort of fool.” Salazar returns Elise’s newspaper, which she promptly Banishes again. “If they seek Poland after what was done to Czechoslovakia…”

“They will seek _everything_ ,” Elise says in agreement.

“Just as Grindelwald does.”

Elise’s lips thin at mention of Grindelwald’s name. “If France has but one kindness granted to her at the moment, it is that Grindelwald has only raided. He has not yet issued an official declaration of war against the magical governments of Europe.”

“Even Wizarding Britain recognizes that to be inevitable, given the trouble Grindelwald has caused. What does he raid for?” Salazar asks.

“No one is yet certain, but he leaves no clues behind as to what he seeks. Those who are magical who live and dwell in Nuremberg, which places them near that monstrosity that Grindelwald has dubbed Nurmengard, have already retreated to places of assumed safety. Some of those families had sense enough to come to my school.” Elise bites her lip, which causes the hard set of her features to soften. At age thirty-five, she is the youngest Head Teacher ever to rule over Beauxbatons, but Elise witnessed the entirety of the Great War, and knows of all the ills that war brings. Salazar can think of none better suited to lead Beauxbatons in this time but her. “Our _sorcier_ and _sorcière_ brethren attempted to warn their neighbors, _les gens sans_. Most did not listen.”

In less than a year, Germany and its allies hold Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, driving Allied forces from the Commonwealth out of the Continent entirely. By that time, Salazar is working with those magicians who choose to fight rather than shelter, and their entire operation is forced underground. Quite literally, in some instances.

“I hate crypts,” Aurelius Achilles mutters. He’s a German-born magician schooled in France, one who has no love of anything Nazi. Aurelius and his twin sister Alexis both worked in the Magical German Ministry before the election of Hitler; Aurelius was a translator, and Alexis was _Magiemiliz_[1]. They’ve proven themselves fonts of valuable information, for all that Alexis looks as if she would fit in fine in a burlesque club.

“I worry more about the water coming down from above,” Salazar tries to say, but it’s difficult to be understood when he has a torch in one hand, a map in the other, and his wand clenched between his teeth. They meet Alexis, who is waiting with five others, one of whom is new. The Achilles twins confirmed their new member’s devotion to secrecy before bringing them below the Paris streets, so Salazar has no concerns there.

“We can’t win back Paris. Can we?” Duipuis asks in dejection. Even his dark hair is hanging in limp threads, as if it has also given up.

“Not now. Given the way things are progressing, possibly not for several years yet.” Salazar is glad he left everything of true value to him in the Willow House in England, though he often longs for the company of his brother’s portrait. The occupying Nazis are liberal enough with their bullets that he might’ve lost everything to vultures searching a man believed to be a corpse.

They never find his wand. Some things do not allow themselves to be taken.

A dark-haired, dark-eyed magician who will only allow them to know her name as Marie drops the day’s non-magical newspaper onto the table in disgust. “They call themselves the Axis Powers now. Japan, Italy, Germany. All are in danger of this joining but the Soviets.”

A year. All of it in a single, bloody damned _year!_

By 1941, Salazar has spent just as much time assisting _Libres Sorciers Occidentaux_[2] as he did the Freed French Forces and _La Résistance_. The Resistance has communication firmly established with Britain; the Western Free Wizards are so well-entrenched that it doesn’t need their assistance any longer.

“Why do you help the _les gens sans?_ ” Marie asks him. Earlier in the season, their cell made the decision to take on the more difficult act of spying on Gellert Grindelwald and Nazi Germany on their home ground. It is now the end of October, almost Samhain. Salazar and Marie are the only two members of their original cell still in France, but they will not be for much longer.

Salazar has the advantage of being able to spy without disguising himself save for the need to bloody well dye his hair to hide his age. He’s spent the last year crafting the identity of a staunch Spanish fascist sympathizer who finds himself welcomed by Nazis as well as Grindelwald’s allies, though Spain herself will have naught to do with the Axis Powers. Aurelius and Alexis speak their birth language with no trace of a French accent, and appear to be the perfect Nazi Aryan ideal with their pale hair and blue eyes. Marie will have the true difficulty, being both French and Jewish, but she refuses to remain behind. The potion Salazar brews changes the color of Marie’s hair on her entire body, but everything else, she insists on doing herself.

“Why would I not help them? They are also living beings. Their use of magic should not matter a whit,” Salazar finally replies when the last patrols are gone. It’s easier, after that, to find a safe route in the darkness. If the country had bothered to keep to its own borders, they would now officially be in Germany.

“Grindelwald is meant to be a _sorcier’s_ only concern.”

Salazar keeps lookout while Marie chooses the place where she will bury everything remaining that is precious to her: gold star of David, the lace handkerchief that holds all that remains of her hope chest, and photographs of lost family members. Some were executed. Others were imprisoned, yet cannot be found in any prison cell in France.

“Given how Germany treats your own people, I think you already know why I would also help those without magic.”

Marie returns to his side, brushing her dirty hands off on her trousers before straightening. “I do. It’s why we like you, Saul. You understand that there is more than one reason why this war cannot merely be endured. It must be fought, and it must be won.”

The fascist Spaniard magician Saul Luiz easily secures a meeting with Gellert Grindelwald. His picture has been in the newspapers, but in black and white print only. In person, he has white-blond hair, pale skin, and harsh, piercing pale blue eyes. He is nearing the age of sixty, the sharp planes of his features beginning to soften with age, but he all but radiates power and charisma. It’s no wonder so many fools have joined together under his banner—and it is a _stupid_ banner. Grindelwald does not care where his allies come from so long as they are useful to him.

It will be hard to gain his trust to be an effective spy. Grindelwald is paranoid, but not without justification, and intelligent enough to turn paranoia into caution and an excess of security measures. Bloody hell, Salazar never thought he would miss any part of the Great War!

That first meeting in November grants him one thing, though, and it’s terrifying in its importance. The moment Grindelwald drops his wand into his hand to curse a sycophant who refuses to keep his mouth from spewing dangerous words, Salazar recognizes the carved length of the Elder Wand.

Salazar spends a great deal of time the next day by himself, pacing a rural bit of land and swearing under his breath while clenching his jaw. As if Grindelwald’s base of power was not enough of a problem, there is a cursed and powerful wand to contend with. It explains why magicians from America as well as an Allied International Confederacy group failed in their attempts to kill the bastard. It takes special circumstances, or outright foolishness on the wielder’s part, to overcome the Elder Wand.

It also stirs anew Salazar’s anger against his little brother’s caretakers during Nizar’s childhood. “The Tale of the Three Brothers” is now a popular Wizarding nursery story throughout the British Isles, Europe, and even the Americas, but Nizar had never heard of the Deathly Hallows until they were placed into Salazar’s hands.

Salazar hasn’t seen the Wand since Antioch attempted to murder him with it. His last glimpse of the Resurrection Stone was in the ring that Valerian, Cadmus’s son, passed on to his eldest when young Antonitis came of age. The last time he saw the Cloak—aside from the one safely stored away in the Willow House—Iolanthe had just died, and it was being given by Ignotus to his grandson Nobilis. It was once meant to go to Wychardus, but his parents outlived their only son.

He knows the Cloak is somewhere in the hands of a Potter magician in England. The unexpected difficulty is that there are _many_ magical Potter families, all of them descended from Ignotus and Iolanthe Peverell. Only one of those family branches will hold Death’s own Cloak of Invisibility, and thanks to records lost during the fires in London during the 1600s, Salazar hasn’t the first clue which of them it might be. He could trace that particular lineage backwards after that, but only once he discovers if the family bearing the Cloak knows those lost names. Ignotus was a good lad, but he and his wife were not the source of his little brother’s Deslizarse blood.

In the second week of December, German newspapers gleefully print the news that Japan assaulted Pearl Harbor, the shipyards for the majority of vessels in the United States Navy. It is considered both a success and a massacre, a sign that Germans will prevail.

“Fuck that,” their newest spy mutters. Lewis is a blond man with blue eyes from Ireland. His family’s original plan didn’t include Lewis leaving the family pub (which will be his inheritance from his grandfather), but Lewis’s father died when the Germans pushed the Allied forces off the Continent. That was enough for Lewis to know where he was meant to be; he found his own way across the Channel and joined the first group of spies to recognize his talents. The man is so very Gaelic is nearly hurts to listen to him speak, but when he isn’t being true to his roots, Lewis can fake German mannerisms and regional accents better than any of them.

“They’ve not won any sort of victory, not by stirring up the Americans,” Lewis continues. “That’s like stickin’ your hand into a beehive an’ expectin’ the bees will sit all nice and docile-like as you rob them blind.”

“Given Germany’s easy victories but for the Commonwealth Allies, I would not be surprised if they expected exactly that,” Marie says in a bitter voice. “The article mentions that this was almost the whole of the American fleet.”

“They’ve other boats than those, and more can be built,” Lewis insists. “I’ve got a good feeling about it!”

Alexis rolls her eyes. “Saul, you’re the master of Divination. What do you think?”

 _I think I would dearly love to ask my brother’s irritating portrait so many questions right now._ “I’ve no idea. They were only just recovering from an economic downfall that rivaled that of Germany’s fate after the Great War.” England had also felt the sting of the American Depression, but recovered quickly in comparison.

Salazar gestures until Alexis understands and passes him her half-full wine glass. It’s easier with his wand, but he doesn’t need one to read the water as long as his focus is true. They’ve plenty of candles to cast the right sort of light for rich reflections.

The very first thing he sees is a misty shoreline. Then the imagery skips ahead to boats approaching. The boats beach themselves in the sand before they reach land. Their fronts open, and soldiers—thousands of soldiers—are disgorged from their insides. Within moments, the ocean is as red as the wine, but still the soldiers keep surging forward. Salazar sees patches of Commonwealth colors, but mixed among them are also many to mark soldiers from the United States.

“Yes, they’ll join the war, but it seems the Allies will not land again in northern Europe without paying a stiff price for it,” Salazar tells the others.

“When?” Maxime Moscovici asks. She’s an Ashkenazi Jewish magician, French by way of her father and Romani by way of her mother. She taught Romani magic at Beauxbatons until news reached her of what coup-conquered and turncoat Nazi Romania had done to her family. Headmistress Elise Mercier sent her to Saul two months previous. “We need hope, Saul. It will be easier to fight if we know that we are not alone.”

“We are _never_ alone,” Salazar counters, but magically prods at Alexis’s wine glass once more. He needs a date, something strongly tied to this oceanic bloodbath. An image grudgingly appears for him, that of a newspaper opened by someone with angry hands. Salazar freezes the image, squinting to read the date. “1944, but I cannot make out the month. January, June, or July. I suspect June.”

“Christ in Heaven,” Lewis whispers in the complete, haunting silence that follows Salazar’s words. “Three years from now?”

“Two years and some months, not three. Do not make it sound worse than it is,” Aurelius scolds him.

“Two years.” Marie regards her wine thoughtfully before drinking the remainder. “We’ve proved to British wizards that there is much that can be done on Continental soil. It’s high time we gained more from the Commonwealth than mere volunteers.”

Some of those volunteers, Salazar knows, are here already. When the Blitz began, a united magical defence arose to counter it. No offensive was mounted, no plans made other than the protection of British soil. When young magicians realized this, they joined non-magical soldiers in the Army, Navy, and the RAF in order to travel, to fight back. That this takes them away from Britain is a price they have chosen to pay, and Salazar will see to it that the Ministry respects those losses even if he has to bribe every last stingy, bigoted old bag of bones on the Wizengamot.

The next summer grants them another bit of good news, the last they’ll receive for quite some time. Wizarding Britain finally gets off its arse and begins participating in the war with the official creation of magical brigades. Some of them are intermixed groups of magicians and non-magical soldiers, proof of the Wizarding Britain’s Minister for Magic and the British Prime Minister’s pledge to present a united front for the duration of the war. Not everyone knows, of course, as the Ministry is still focused on maintaining their International Statute of Secrecy, but the current Minister all but steamrolled the Wizengamot to make certain there was internal cooperation between governments.

By 1943, it’s obvious that nothing much has changed. The promised magical brigades could not safely make it across the Channel. There are so many Nazis and bloody _Wizarding_ Nazis on the Continent that boats are not a possibility. Even using a Port Key not approved of by Grindelwald is noticed at once. Morale among spies is sitting somewhere down in a mine shaft.

Grindelwald has magical control over everything Germany holds, which is most of Western Europe. His lack of progress ends with Spain and Italy, and his attempt to invade the Soviet bloc went as well as Hitler’s recent attempt—badly.

“Does no one learn from others’ mistakes?” Salazar asked Aurelius. “Do they not remember the name Napoleon?”

“Apparently they do not, or think they could succeed where he failed.” Aurelius snorts. “I hear rumors that Soviet snipers are immune to the cold, and had a fine time hunting their prey during the winter.”

“It’s like watching a polar bear attempt to invade Spain from the Mediterranean end,” Salazar mutters, which causes Lewis to snort and then choke on his own spit and laughter. Salazar smiles at Lewis, but rubs his temple with one hand while doing so.

Marie notices first, even though Salazar tries to keep the difficulty to himself. Considering the ways and means in which Marie places herself in harm’s way, Salazar is often amazed she is still alive. “You’re tired. More than the others.”

Salazar smiles at her and shares her canteen when it is offered. “I am a bit older than I look.”

“You look fine. I don’t speak of your appearance, you vain fool.” Marie watches the skirmish below as it unfolds, a batch of magicians from the French resistance fighting against an unfortunate group of Nazis who stumbled over their camp. Salazar discovered during the Great War that revolvers have no concern for magic, but semi-automatic or automatic firearms are not much fond of it.

Very few non-magical soldiers wander around with limited revolvers these days, not when a semi-automatic will hold more rounds. That is one group of Nazis who will not be leaving their chosen valley.

“Then what is it you speak of?”

“Magic. Your _magic_ is tired,” Marie says. “Even though I see you expend very little of it.”

“I am an Earth Speaker. I do not necessarily ever stop,” Salazar replies. What he feels through the Earth is certainly not helping. It wasn’t so bad in 1939, but the accumulating damage is wearing on him.

“Not that, either. Who is calling for you that you ignore?” Marie asks bluntly. “Is it assistance they require while you remain in Germany, spying and fighting with us?”

“You have excellent Sight.” Perhaps there is a very good reason why Marie has survived so long, after all. “I bear a noble magical title in Spain, but Spain has been without a monarch since her king left the throne in an attempt to avert civil war.” Not that it had worked very well, or at all.

Aside from his brother’s portrait, Salazar has not spoken to anyone else of the distinctive, repeating chime of insistent magic that’s been plaguing him. Magical titles do not simply end because a king abandons his throne, and the magical title of Castile has been demanding that Salazar restore a royal ruler to Spain since 1931. It would have been better if Alfonso XIII had officially dissolved the monarchy instead of fleeing to another country. Over a decade of listening to that chime, of feeling that compulsion, is as tiring as it is frustrating.

With Salazar not responding to his kingdom, the magic of the throne might be seeking out his little brother, too. Salazar hopes that Nizar’s portrait within Hogwarts is protected from that call, else the students of their House might receive more of an education in language than they bargained for.

“I am not the only magician from my country who is hearing that insistent call, but to answer it right now would mean the death of any monarch we attempted to safeguard, and likely cause our deaths, as well.”

Marie is sympathetic as well as curious, but doesn’t ask questions that Salazar cannot answer. “That must be difficult to deal with.”

“One can get used to anything.” It’s the truth, but Salazar has never gone so long without a ruler sitting upon an Iberian throne. He is nine hundred seventy-four years old, and that is a long time to be used to a magic that never once changed its call…until it suddenly did.

Salazar taps into an Earth that is ever more unhappy, crosses an angry Channel, and visits London to give reports regarding their progress, or their lack of it. He goes home long enough to ensure that the Willow House is still standing, and takes a bottle or three of aging wine from his cellar. Germany might not be suffering the ration shortages of England, but Salazar has better taste. If an evening’s enjoyment of a rare vintage is the only thing he can give to the others to lift their spirits, he’ll willingly grant it.

Their luck turns, or it gets worse. Salazar often thinks it is both, but for whatever reason, Gellert Grindelwald is suddenly far more interested in Saul Luiz and Alexis Achilles. Grindelwald grows fond of them, even to the point of tolerating Salazar and Alexis’s “lesser” allies, which forces them to keep their safehouses nearer to Nuremberg. It’s dangerous, bordering on foolish, but the others are limited by anti-Apparition zones that are becoming thicker on the ground. With half of them now ensconced in Grindelwald’s court in some fashion, and the other half trusted by the Nazis controlling the city, it would be odd if they had no local address.

They move just in time. Nurmengard was already surrounded by anti-Apparition wards, but suddenly the whole of Nuremberg is surrounded by them, as well. They must continue their ruse to keep gathering the information they can, and in doing so, they’ve cut themselves off from the very people who need to receive it. Salazar is the only one who can tap into the Earth and cut through the terrible feel of the wards crawling across his skin, but he now finds himself trapped for weeks at a time in that foul man’s fucking castle. It goes on for so long that both Churchill and Minister Spencer-Moon must believe him dead. He doesn’t think either man would miss him overly much.

Finally, they’re granted a reprieve from Grindelwald’s company. Grindelwald is off to campaign in the eastern bloc in an attempt to gain Soviet allies with words instead of weapons, and only a few of his most trusted lieutenants accompany him. Grindelwald is hoping to gain favor by reminding the Soviets of his Austro-Hungarian heritage. Salazar finds the idea amusing; Grindelwald seems to have forgotten why the countries he courts are not much fond of Austrians.

Salazar and Alexis escape Nurmengard and go their separate ways, returning to the addresses in the city that Grindelwald and the Nazis believe to be theirs. Salazar is in no mood to keep to the walkways and takes a shortcut through a park, hands stuffed into the pockets of his suit coat and a scowl on his face. He’s exhausted, and is thinking on little else but his fierce desire for this fucking war to be ended already.

His sense of Divination screams of danger almost all the time now. It leaves him a bit deaf to true moments of impending calamity, and thus he has almost no warning at all. Instead, he hears the shrieking whistle all of Germany is learning to fear.

“Dammit,” Salazar mutters. He commits to a bit of Desplazarse that puts him on the other side of the park—just before a bomb turns the park, the street, and several buildings east of him into trenches, dust, and rubble.

When Salazar lifts his head, his ears ringing from the blast, he is lying in a new ditch. A halted wave of plowed earth is still dropping clumps of soil and pebbles down onto his head. “ _Mis dioses._ ”

“You can certainly say that again, please and thank you.”

Salazar jerks his head in the direction of very precise King’s English in a place it most certainly doesn’t belong. The man opposite him in the ditch has very dark brown hair with odd glints of color and pale skin, though he was sensible enough not to dress as blatantly English as he speaks. The Nazi officer’s uniform he’s wearing would definitely have helped him to avoid being stopped by patrols. Not a single pin or patch is out of place. Just enough rank to remain unquestioned, but not so much that others would look to him for command decisions.

Then the Englishman lifts his head, and Salazar finds himself locking gazes with a man whose eyes are not merely hazel, but _exactly_ like his own. Salazar’s magic, which has grown unused to having family to sing to, causes Salazar to sit up in abrupt recognition.

Family. This man is of his blood—distantly, but he is Deslizarse nonetheless.

Then the world decides it a fine time to remind Salazar that there are downsides to being a spy. Not all of Germany is fond of the Nazi regime.

“ _Bastarde!_ ” a young voice yells. Salazar can’t find them through the rising haze of smoke and dust.

The grenade that lands between Salazar and a wide-eyed English spy, however, is a bit obvious.

“Oh—fuck _me_ ,” Salazar bites out. He throws himself over the bedamned thing, calling upon the Earth to pull it down into the soil before the grenade explodes.

It works and it doesn’t. The blast is contained, muffled by the earth, but the force of it is still directed upwards. The world tilts on its axis in a wild spin before Salazar lands heavily on his side.

The English spy has an excellent grasp of German, accompanied by proper inflection, and has no difficulty in shouting his anger. “You fools! You have no idea what you’ve done!” Pistol shots follow his words. Salazar recognizes the sharp barks of a Mauser .30 caliber, one that doesn’t seem to have received the news about not working near magic.

Then the Englishman who shares Salazar’s eyes is rolling him over. “My God. I feared you dead already.”

Salazar lifts his head long enough to catch a glimpse of the large red stain spreading across the front of his shirt and jacket. “Alas, you’ll have to tolerate me for a bit longer,” he says, tasting blood. He is hurt, badly, if he is not yet feeling the wound.

“We have to find a medic,” his English friend says. It worries Salazar even more when being scooped up from the ground also does not hurt. “My healing spells were never much good for anything.”

“Start speaking German again before someone bloody notices,” Salazar tells him. “Idiot. Do you not know what they do to spies in this country?”

“Throw grenades at them, it would seem,” his rescuer says dryly, but at least this time he is speaking German. There are a nuances local to Nuremberg that he lacks, but that would be easily explained by claiming he originates elsewhere.

Salazar smiles. “Logical point.”

“This is not how I expected to find you, Saul Luiz.”

Salazar blinks a few times, annoyed by the feel of grit trapped beneath his eyelids. “You know who I am?”

“I was sent here to find you, actually,” the man admits. “You’re considered valuable enough to both our leaders that they wanted to know if you were alive, dead, or had decided upon a convenient exchange of priorities.”

“What a fanciful way of saying traitor.” Salazar closes his eyes for a moment and blacks out. When things come back into focus, they are much further away from the destroyed park. He can hear the whistles that signify other falling bombs, but they’re distant, following an eastern path that is counter to their western stumbling. His rescuer has to stop twice when he is addressed by Nazi squads who’ve been stationed in the city long enough to recognize Salazar, though the non-magical know him as Fernan Suero. The magicians always meet Saul Luiz. Grindelwald finds the translation of Salazar’s chosen name to be amusing.

“Fool! If Suero dies before I find a medic, you’ll be the next man I shoot! Now get out of my way!” The English spy marches on without waiting for the Nazi sergeant’s stuttered response.

“What a way you have with words,” Salazar slurs in Euskaran. He doubts the Englishman understood that. Blood loss is no man’s friend. “ _Wie heißen du?_ ”

“Harry.”

Salazar stares up at him in disbelief. “Hari? Really?”

“Truly. Well, it’s Henry Simon Potter, if you wish to be formal. First lieutenant, first battalion of the combined wizard and Muggle infiltration forces under the joint command of Minister for Magic Spencer-Moon and Prime Minister Churchill.”

“Hari,” Salazar says again, and starts giggling. _That_ hurts, a burn in his chest and a deep ache in his belly. Any other man would be dead by now, a fact that only makes him laugh harder.

“I’ve read that blood loss makes a man giddy, but this is excessive,” Henry Potter comments. He’s gone right back to English again. “Do cease that at once and tell me how to find a medic in this godforsaken city!”

Salazar rattles off the address of the closest safehouse, though he has no idea if their new healer is in residence. “Can you find it?”

“Perhaps, but I didn’t have much time to study a map of Nuremberg before my arrival. Nothing today has gone according to plan, including the bombs. Their target time was dawn, and they must’ve missed it, since two hours ’til noon is most assuredly not sunrise.”

“Dammit.” He’s left with no choice, then. “Left jacket pocket. Spanish coin. Port Key.” It takes Salazar a ridiculous length of time to remember the activation phrase. “Bugger this for a lark.” At least Grindelwald isn’t in Germany at the moment to wonder at the use of an illegal Port Key.

“Last resort, hmm? Wise of you, given the tales we’ve heard. They chill a man’s blood.” Henry Potter glances around and then retrieves the coin not with a hand or a wand, but Summons it with a twitch of his fingers. “By all that’s holy, please don’t tell anyone I did that. I’m meant to be portraying a Muggle. Bugger this for a lark.”

Salazar vomits when the hook and twist of the Port Key ends. Right, that. He’d forgotten the other reason why he didn’t want to use that means of travel. Injuries such as these do not mix well with a Port Key’s abrupt magic.

“Oh, now what the fuck is this?” he hears Lewis asks in disbelief. “A Nazi, and—Saul? What the hell happened to you?”

“Young man, I believe that is rather obvious,” Henry Potter says, his voice authoritative. “Fetch your medic, and do it quickly, or they might not have anyone to save when they arrive.”

“Right. Yeah. I’m off to find her,” Lewis responds, and Disapparates with a crack. Salazar despairs of teaching that one to mute his magical travel. Marie mastered such years ago.

“Better.” Henry Potter kicks the kitchen table onto its side to clear it of its contents, then rightens it again with another practiced kick. He places Salazar on its rough wood and lets out a sigh. “That will have to do for the moment. Even with magical healing, a good medic should have water nearby. You, sir, are quite the mess.”

 _A rich, Pure-blooded Potter_ , Salazar thinks. It fits with his little brother’s history, but neither of them had any idea who Nizar’s grandfather had been or what he might be like, much less the man who may possibly be his great-grandfather.

Then again, there are so many Potter families. This man may be nothing more than a distant cousin…but somehow, Salazar doesn’t think so. He has come across no other Potter in England whose magic sings with the familiarity of House Deslizarse.

“Henry Potter.” Salazar feels a smile stretch across his face. So far, Henry Potter seems a sensible man, and Salazar is much fond of sensible. “I’ve been looking for you for quite a while, also.”

“Do be quiet, Saul Luiz,” Henry Potter chides him. “That is…you Spaniards must be a stubborn lot. I honestly don’t know how it is you’re still breathing.”

He must pass out again; Salazar wakes up trying not to shriek. “Fuck, what the hell—!” he manages, and chokes down the rest of his words.

Henry Potter glares at Salazar with his too-familiar eyes. He took off his officer’s jacket, bundled it up, and is pressing it against Salazar’s belly. “There is absolutely no need for that sort of language.”

“The fuck there isn’t!” Salazar’s voice goes high-pitched with pain. “One of those fucking rank pins is in my bloody spleen, dammit!”

Henry Potter pauses. “Well, I’ll grant you that _bloody_ is quite accurate.”

Salazar and Henry Potter stare at each other before they both collapse into near-hysterical laughter. It hurts, fucking gods, he wasn’t exaggerating about that bedamned pin! “I’ve heard the Allies have shot men for that!” Salazar gasps out.

“I’d most likely deserve it,” Henry Potter agrees, but he’s still holding his ruined jacket in place. “You’re a special sort of man, aren’t you, Saul Luiz?”

“You’ve no idea.”

“But I’d very much like to find out,” Henry Potter responds. “You’ve survived this long, Saul. You had best not die on me before a healer or a medic arrives!”

The prod from Salazar’s magic is so strong that he is never certain afterwards if it’s the family magic, or his own divination talents screaming necessity at him. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. He understands what it wants, if not why.

“Henry. Hari.” Dammit. Salazar really did try to get it right. “There is no need for any healer to rush.” He swallows down blood, feels the sharp crunch and slide of dirt in his teeth. “I literally cannot die.”

Henry Potter draws back from the table, his eyes narrowing. “I didn’t realize Wizarding Britain would rely on a spy who would dare to use the Darkest of magics.”

“What?” Salazar stares at Henry Potter in confusion until he realizes what the man is implying. “No. No Horcrux. S’foul. It’s an…an entirely different sort of curse.” Then he blacks out once more.

[1] German: Magic Militia, i.e. the equivalent of British Hit Wizards

[2] French: Free Western Wizards


	2. Resistance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The British obviously overlooked the fact that an American only has to be sold on the idea that his cause is just and he is capable of anything.”  
> ― Paul Brickhill, The Great Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some awesome things some people said this morning mean this weekend is a bonus chapter weekend. 
> 
> ...I think I forgot to mention, but all stuff cheer-read by @norcumii and I'm trying not to fuck up being my own beta. Which worked out so well last chapter.

“You’re a part of the Secret Intelligence Service, you know,” Henry Potter says the next time he wakes. Salazar is in significantly less pain, no longer bleeding, and his internal organs feel like they might be in the right places again. “No, don’t get up,” Henry Potter hurries to add when Salazar lifts his head. “Matron Schneider still means to have another go at your insides. You’ve a number of operatives who are quite worried about you.”

Salazar lets himself thump back down onto the table, but there is something soft beneath his head now. A folded suit jacket, perhaps, considering that his is missing and he’s now covered with a quilt. “Since when am I part of SIS?”

“MI6, actually, if you wish to shorten it,” Henry Potter corrects him. “The Germans are well aware of what SIS stands for, but MI6 is still a bit new. And you’ve been marked as part of MI6 since 1939. Madam Moscovici reported that you’ve been on the ground in France, helping to organize the resistance cells on both sides, since the war began in September that year. Then you moved camp to Germany and continued reporting on both the Nazis and that arrogant fool Grindelwald, which made Churchill rather pleased. Minister Spencer-Moon backdated your paperwork, and Prime Minister Churchill authorized it. When you stopped reporting in, both of Britain’s ministers wanted to know what happened to one of our most efficient spies. Thanks to my service in the Great War, my German is excellent. I volunteered to seek you out.”

“Being an efficient spy is terrible, then. It means I endure Grindelwald’s company far longer than I would prefer,” Salazar rasps.

“Can I get you anything?” Henry Potter asks, standing up from his chair. “You sound dreadful.”

Salazar’s throat is too dry, but the thought of attempting to consume water is nauseating. His thirst can wait. “No, not yet. Thank you.” He swallows and thinks he can probably manage a proper accounting, if a brief one. “I have most recently been forced to endure Grindelwald’s dubious hospitality for two solid months. Such has been happening often of late, much as I despise him. He took too much of a liking to myself and Alexis Achilles. It’s difficult to get away from someone who is as clingy as he is vile. I’d only just been granted opportunity to be away from Nurmengard when we encountered each other.”

“I’m not certain I would consider it an encounter. More as if we were nearly blown up together.” Henry Potter hesitates. “That grenade. You saved my life.”

“I was trying to send it into the earth so it would not harm either of us.” Salazar licks his lips until they feel less cracked. “I wasn’t fast enough, but I’m glad you weren’t harmed by it.”

“How is it that you cannot die? I don’t know how such a thing can be possible without…well. You did say it was not a Horcrux. Given your actions yesterday, I believe you, but I was never taught of anything else that could preserve life as yours has been. Matron Schneider was quite certain that your wounds should have been fatal. She ascribes your survival to my swift actions, but we both know that isn’t the reason you survived.”

Salazar grimaces at the idea of sleeping through an entire day. “If I’m meant to be MI6, I suppose there is a dossier with my name on it?”

“There is. I was allowed unrestricted access to what is known about you, which isn’t much.” Henry Potter’s words aren’t accusatory, merely curious. “You’re a British citizen of Spanish descent.” Salazar snorts; he is _not_ British. “You’ve a house in the East Midlands, in Nottinghamshire, which appears to have been in your family for many generations. You’re known to both Minister Churchill and Minister Spencer-Moon due to your service in the Great War, though you refused any public recognition afterwards. That you’re a wizard isn’t in doubt in the slightest—oh, yes, that reminds me.” Henry Potter stands up and presses something into Salazar’s lax hand. “I’m terribly sorry for absconding with it, but it needed to be cleaned.”

Salazar wraps his fingers around his cherrywood wand, reassured by the press of carved runes against his skin. “Thank you.”

Henry Potter fusses with the quilt and frowns. “Why is it that you know of Horcruxes? I only know the basics of their existence, and that through learning of them from family, not schooling.”

Salazar closes his eyes. “I know of them to destroy them.”

He blearily returns to consciousness a short while later, given that Henry Potter is still the one sitting watch over him. He could possibly drink something now and not be ill, but he feels far too dizzy. “Out of Blood-Replenishing Potions, aren’t we?”

“Unfortunately,” Henry Potter answers. He glances towards the sitting room before returning his attention to Salazar. “You said it was a different sort of curse.”

It takes Salazar a minute to recall what he’d spoken of, when, and why. “You said before…” His throat isn’t as parched, and his teeth are no longer gritty. Elsa must have lost patience with his slumbering and decided she wasn’t about to let her newest victim die from lack of water. “That dossier. Did it mention I’ve a mastery in Divination?”

“It said nothing about a mastery, but there was mention that you were prodigiously talented at Divination,” Henry Potter says.

“It’s a natural talent. Thankfully, it is not Cassandra’s Curse.” Salazar thinks for a moment. How best to word this, when he’d planned never to reveal it at all? Perhaps if he’d not been bleeding and injured, he would have kept his wits about him long enough to resist that magical prodding. However, the damage is done. “A long time ago, I looked upon the water. My mother—she was just trained enough in her magic to be a Water-Speaker. I am not; I’m an Earth-Speaker, but water has always been my best medium for divination.”

“I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve no idea what you mean by Water-Speaker and Earth-Speaker,” Henry Potter says. “I would assume from the context that you mean a type of elemental magic.”

“Yes, but of the sort that isn’t taught. You’re born to it, or you are not.”

“I see.” Henry Potter waves his hand. “My apologies. I’m wearing you out by demanding explanations, but…”

“But you’ve concerns. I would feel similarly.” Salazar smiles. “I once saw that a threat to our world would arise, one that would require assistance to dispatch. Wizarding Britain has…they’ve forgotten so much, Henry Potter.”

“Just Henry, please,” Henry insists, but he looks gravely concerned. “You’re older than you appear, aren’t you?”

Salazar nods. “A bit.”

“And you don’t want others to know.”

“Sometimes I’ve told others,” Salazar says, “and it did not go well. They react as you did, fearful of vile magic, but were not convinced by the truth. Some have attempted to do terrible things. I’d rather those I spy with worry about this war and their safety, not concern themselves with my intentions.”

Henry shakes his head. “You could have kept your silence.”

“You witnessed my survival of an event that would have killed another man. What else was I to do?”

“Call it a miracle and leave it be, I should think,” Henry says wryly. “Why tell me? Why not let it be?”

“In truth?” Salazar swallows again, still tasting the echo of dirt and copper. Spots are beginning to steal his vision. “I really don’t know.”

If Henry speaks again, Salazar doesn’t hear. The next time he wakes, he feels badly bruised, sore, and tired, but no longer injured. He is also in the safehouse’s upstairs bedroom, tucked into a proper bed, cleaned up and dressed in someone else’s nightshirt. The eastern sunlight streaming in through the windows tells Salazar he has likely slept through another day.

The house lacks plumbing except for the kitchen, but a cast iron tub is in the bedroom, placed near the bedroom’s stone hearth. Salazar finds his wand on the bedside table and all but tosses magic in that direction so water will begin to collect in the tub, though the act makes his head spin. He waits until the dizziness passes before calling forth the wood and flame needed to have a cheerful fire. It might be late summer, but blood loss can chill a man’s bones for days afterwards.

Marie barges into the bedroom just before Salazar falls asleep in the bathtub. “Good gods, woman!” he yelps, grabbing his wand to Summon the nearest bit of cloth to cover himself.

“Oh, please. You don’t have anything that I’m the least bit interested in,” Marie retorts, dragging over the nearest chair before sitting next to the tub. “You’ve healed up well.”

“And you’ve forgotten your bloody manners,” Salazar mutters, vexed. The standards of modesty in this century are changing just as fast as its gadgetry.

“You’ve always said that if it was of vital importance, you didn’t care if we were yanking you out of the toilet so long as we told you,” Marie says.

That makes Salazar’s blood run cold, no matter the warmth of the water. “What has happened?”

“Alexis left Nurmengard in your company. The two of you split up to return to your respective safehouses.”

“Yes…” Salazar frowns. He hasn’t seen or heard the twins’ voices since Henry brought him here. “That is what we usually do. What went wrong?”

“Alexis was caught—not by Grindelwald’s people, who would have known to leave her alone. After the bombing, the Nazi patrols were thicker than usual, and…” Marie presses her lips together, allowing Salazar to finally recognize the shine of rage in her dark eyes. “The Nazis took an interest in her. It didn’t matter that Alexis is German, that she is blonde and blue-eyed. What mattered to that band of foul bastards is that she was a pretty woman walking alone. Alexis didn’t defend herself, thinking it would be a simple detainment until they confirmed her German birth…”

Salazar closes his eyes and prepares himself for the worst sort of news. “Have we lost her?” If Alexis is gone, Aurelius will not be long for this world, either.

“Alexis is still alive, though she doesn’t seem fond of that fact. We can’t leave her alone; she’s a on suicide watch.” Marie flexes her hands into temporary claws, a sign of the Animagus training she’d begun but never had opportunity to complete.

“What of these Nazis? Because if they aren’t dead already—”

“They are. Aurelius dealt with them.” Marie hesitates. “Because Grindelwald is _fond_ of Alexis, Aurelius has earned a high place in Nurmengard for his swift retribution.”

“I suppose it’s nice to know that Grindelwald’s bargains with Nazis carry as much weight as those he makes with us.” Salazar breathes out a sigh and thinks he’s probably had as much peace as can be expected from this day. “Find me something to wear, please. I am not going downstairs in the nude, no matter your lack of interest.”

“Already done.” Marie retrieves a satchel from her trouser pocket, unshrinks it, and tosses it onto the bed. “We’re waiting for you in the kitchen. Don’t take too long. Don’t fall on your face, either.”

When Salazar does make his way downstairs later, it’s to find a literal full house awaiting him. The safehouse was never meant to host so many.

Aurelius is present, and nods when Salazar glances at him; someone trustworthy is sitting with Alexis, then. Salazar, Aurelius, Maxime, Alexis, and Marie are the only survivors of the original resistance cell they built together in France.

They lost Duipuis early in 1942. Evan fell to the wands of Wizarding Nazis later that same year. Beauchamp was not killed, but died of a sudden and unexpected aneurism in 1941. Belgian cousins Tessa and Mae were taken from them in 1940, caught and executed by overzealous allies who thought them to be traitors. Lysandra, an Englishwoman and magician who’d become trapped in France when the country was invaded while she visited with family. Marius and William, a Frenchman and his Welsh spouse, were two of their first losses in 1939. Joan, who’d assumed the Anglicized name of her country’s great hero, Jeanne d’Arc, was their third. Ulysses, Albrecht, and Jones died in January during a coordinated Nazi strike against one of the safehouses. The Nazis who killed them were searching for non-magical spies, but even magicians can be defeated by heavy artillery fire if they’re not aware of the danger.

Lewis of Ireland remains with them, His talents have matured, and his spying is ever bolder.

Madam Isabella Schneider, who prefers Elsa when not demanding she be known by her healer’s title, is a recent and valued addition. She is also a fully trained non-magical nurse who works shift in the local hospital, overhearing furtive whispers while attending her soldier patients.

Hornkoff is a tailor of local renown who gains their intelligence by way of his profession. Too many foolish Nazi officers think nothing of confiding their secrets to their favorite tailor.

John Morgan is another non-magical man, though he is wed to a female magician. His former occupation in England as a banker has served them well in keeping their finances out of Nazi hands.

Hopkirk is also from England, a Pure-blood who speaks of little that isn’t to do with spying on the Pure-blooded Wizarding Nazis who haven’t yet earned a place in Nurmengard. Salazar knowns that Hopkirk has a young daughter named Mafalda, but that is all.

Annette Rothschild is much like Maxime, a female magician on the warpath after Nazis arrested the whole of her family in Luxembourg for the sole crime of being Jewish. She did, at least, finally answer Salazar’s curiosity as to any potential relation to the Protestant magical Rothschild family in England, to which she claimed there is none unless it is so distant as to be ancient.

Richter is a non-magical man who is exceptionally closed-mouthed when it comes to sharing any details about himself, but he’s local to Nuremberg and would lose his family as well as his life if his true identity were revealed. He provides the cell with secrets, supplies, weapons, and words they might otherwise never acquire on their own.

Kaiser is a non-magical woman related to someone in high command in Berlin. She goes only by a spy’s nickname rather than endanger the rest of her family, who are not as impressed with the Nazis as her high-ranked relation. She was a teacher before Hitler’s election, but resigned rather than teach Nazi propaganda, and now hides in plain sight as an overlooked housekeeper working in a Nazi officer’s household—one who has trouble keeping his secrets to himself.

Winter Sauer is a Water-Speaker introduced to the cell by Kaiser as a friend. Winter admits that she is going by a nickname her parents gave her, as she has always had a fascination for ice, but Sauer is true enough. Salazar told her that her fondness for ice reminded him of his brother.

Issam Yilmaz is the youngest member of the cell at age nineteen, whose non-magical Turkish family moved to Germany after the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution in 1923. He was in law school before Germany decided it wasn’t in the mood to tolerate anyone from war-neutral Turkey, and now walks the streets of Nuremberg as a talented confidence man who changes his name as often as others change their pants.

David Nowak escaped the German occupation of Poland using resistance cells that formed before Poland was invaded, created by groups who already understood the danger that Nazi Germany posed. His original task was to warn the rest of Europe of Germany’s intentions only to realize he was too late. He remained with their cell after recognizing the danger of Grindelwald and the strategic importance of Nuremberg. The man is brilliant with explosives; with magicians as close cousins, he knows how to handle and use magical explosives, as well.

Fifteen spies and their guest have crammed themselves into this tiny kitchen, all of them with the same goal: to see the fascism of Nazi Germany and Grindelwald ended.

“I assume you’ve introduced yourself,” Salazar says to Henry, who is standing at the front of the room with the easy stance of natural leader. They do not much resemble each other, and still the man reminds Salazar so much of Nizar that it nearly steals his breath.

“I have,” Henry replies. “Madam Moscovici was kind enough to vouch that I was most certainly not a Nazi when the others felt a bit justifiably paranoid.”

Salazar nods his thanks at Maxime, who smirks at him, the minx. “I suppose now would be the best time for you to tell us why you’re here, then.”

“The first reason I was sent here was to see to your continued health as a group.” Henry’s words are well-chosen, meant to make all of them feel vital despite the Ministers’ orders that Henry concern himself only with Saul Luiz. “The second purpose is to grant you information, which must then be distributed to the other mixed Muggle and Wizarding resistance cells established in Europe.”

Henry takes a moment to pull at the collar of his shirt, which is damp with sweat. They’re all soaked with it except for Salazar, who is simply glad to be warm enough not to be shivering. While he was forced into enduring Grindelwald’s company, their healing supplies ran low, and Salazar doesn’t yet know when he’ll have the opportunity to brew more. None of them trust a potion brewed by a Wizarding Nazi.

Henry’s next words leave them all stunned. “Next summer, there will be a mass invasion of _all_ our combined forces in a concerted effort to return Allied troops to the Continent. It is currently believed that the Allies will have a foothold in Italy by this September, but a foothold is all it may be for many months after that; hence the delay until next year. Our commanders are planning a two-pronged assault on the north and south of Nazi Germany. If the Italian invasion is delayed, there will be only the northern invasion—and it is the northern assault that will require the most assistance. I have with me a dossier of all of the discussed potential landing points, though our few reliable Seers all believe the Allies will ultimately choose Normandy.”

“Christ.” Lewis whistles. “I suppose that’s your predicted 1944 invasion, Saul.”

“Most likely,” Salazar agrees, thinking again of an ocean turned to wine by so much spilled blood.

“It has been suggested that you focus on clearing the Norman path, yes,” Henry says. “To that end, we know you cannot fight directly with the numbers you have, nor can you abandon your watch of Grindelwald, but through Prime Minister Churchill, the Allies are formally asking for magical assistance to perform massive acts of sabotage across the whole of Nazi Germany. Disruptions in communications. Booby traps. Time-consuming mischief. You won’t be acting alone; non-magical resistance groups are being asked to do the same. We’ll need every advantage we can get. The slower the Nazis are to respond to cries for assistance when soldiers land on the northern beaches next summer, the greater our chance of success—and succeed we must. This war has gone on for far too long, but until we have soldiers on the ground, the Nazis will continue to prevail.”

“Well, your lot doesn’t ask for much, do they?” Lewis asks, causing Marie to smile. “And no, I’m not _your_ lot. I’m bloody Irish.”

“You’ll be gaining company, then,” Henry responds. “In this, the British Isles are united. The Welsh, the Scots, the Irish of our kingdom and your Republic, the Manx, the Cornish, the remaining Norwegian settlements hidden in the north, the Isle of Man, and England: all are sending wizards and witches to fight. We are coming prepared to engage the Muggle Nazis just as much as we are Wizarding Nazis, given that the former are most certainly in our way.”

“It is about time,” Aurelius murmurs.

“Right, that,” Hornkoff adds. “It could not have been done sooner? Last year, perhaps?”

Henry shakes his head. “Germany held dominion over the Atlantic. We could not even put together a true plan for a ground assault until their hold over the sea was broken. Also, I am afraid I’ve been ordered to temporarily abscond with your leader.”

“I don’t lead here. I spy,” Salazar corrects him in a mild voice. They are each their own leader; they each understand that a spy in wartime is most often on their own.

“Then consider that you’re the most well-known of our magical spies in regards to both our governments,” Henry replies, every bit the unflappable Pure-blood. “The British ministers wish to debrief you regarding the state of affairs in this part of Germany.”

“You’re famous, Saul,” Annette says in a bland voice. It’s her tacit approval of the journey, or at least the acknowledgement that it is an unavoidable necessity. The others say nothing to counter her.

“For all the wrong reasons, as always,” Salazar replies, signaling his agreement. “Aurelius, given that I was recently and publicly injured, do you feel that Grindelwald would accept my conveyed apologies for recovering at home for a time?”

Aurelius thinks it over before nodding. “He might not like it, but even Grindelwald respects that a grenade is not like a firearm. A grenade does not care about magic, only about doing what it is made to do. I would ask a favor, though.”

Salazar has a feeling he already knows what favor will be asked. “Name it.”

“Take Alexis with you. She needs a place to heal in safety, and that place is not to be found in Europe. I will explain to my sister what will happen and where she will go, but I fear what will become of her if she remains in Germany.”

“There is another thing.” Henry’s warning tone is unmistakable. “The bombing campaigns are only going to get worse. This year they are rare due to German occupation of the sky, but as we gain ground, so too will the bombers. If today did not prove to you that our accuracy is questionable, I’m not certain what could. Nuremberg is high on the Allies’ list of targets. You’ll need to find places to dwell outside of the city, and you should do it soon if you’ve not already begun.”

“That is not easily done,” Winter says. “There are anti-Apparition wards wrapped around the entire city.”

“Some of us do not have the benefit of Apparition and magic, and yet we manage just fine,” Richter responds, rolling his eyes. “There are other ways to avoid these bombs.”

“Bomb shelters. Reinforced ones, given the damage that last bombing run caused.” Issam glances at Hopkirk. “Could magic strengthen any shelters we build?”

Hopkirk scowls before nodding. “Yes, but we will have to act quickly. That makes it harder to act quietly.”

“Even I know that silencing spells exist,” Kaiser says dryly. “We can do it. The effort will be worth it to continue our work in safety.”

Salazar finds Marie after the meeting breaks up, everyone off to spread word of their plans in the safest means possible. No radios, no wireless; they trust in their codes and in each other’s voices. “When I leave with Henry and Alexis, you would be wise to accompany us.”

“You’ll need a woman to be with Alexis, to keep her calm around Potter, especially if he continues to wear that particular uniform,” Marie agrees.

“That is not why I’m suggesting such, though it’s a good idea.”

Marie scowls at him. “Why, then?”

Salazar decides bluntness will serve. “If you stay here, you will be dead before the year’s end, and your death will have served no purpose at all.”

Her scowl fades into confusion. “You’re that certain?”

“Very.” Salazar crosses his arms instead of giving in to the urge to reach out. Marie is not fond of another’s casual touch, even if no harm is meant. “If you go to England, you will be able to continue to assist in the war effort, and most likely not die of it.”

“Most likely, seeing as the Germans may launch another Blitz.” Marie sighs. “Someone needs to remain with Alexis, too. Someone she knows.”

“Or someone that she is introduced to,” Salazar replies. “Our new friend owes me a favor for saving his life, and I’ll be calling it in at once. Alexis needs a place to dwell in absolute safety. I have such a place, but it would be empty of occupants, as you’ll be needed in London. Henry must have at least one female relative who can stay with her for a time.”

“You don’t merely believe it, you’ve Seen that Potter has such a relative. You just like to be circumspect.” Marie narrows her eyes. “Did you give the others this warning? Joan? William and Marius? Lysandra? Ulysses? Did any of them receive the same chance, Saul?”

“Divination is not perfect,” Salazar retorts, but then he sighs in regret. “Some of them, I could see it as a strong possibility. I warned Duipuis, and he ignored my words. Tessa and Mae took every precaution possible when I told them of what might await them, and still lost their lives. Marius and William fell to the prejudice stirred up by Nazi Germany against homosexuality, and what I’d seen of their fate lay beyond that moment.” The two had bravely chosen to take a stand before a mob, ready to prove that they were not wrong to be as they were, but it was a mob of the frustrated, the scared, the hungry. Even Myrddin would have run instead of staying to face angry people fueled by those things.

“Then I would be a fool to ignore you, wouldn’t I?” Marie bites her lip and glances over her shoulder before turning back to face him. “Saul. You know how I feel about the camps.”

“I do. You’ve also showed me photographs of your missing family so often that I may well remember them for the rest of my life,” Salazar tells her. “I will search for them, I promise. You know Annette will, also. If we could safely liberate the concentration camps today, I would do so in a heartbeat.”

He wants to. Gods, how he wants to. He knows how badly Nazi Germany treats those they view as lesser. Two years ago, it was merely rumor, but now they know there are new camps to the northeast, ones that are far, far worse than those in the west—and those in the west already stand as some of the vilest things Salazar has ever seen.

“I know.” Marie clenches her jaw before nodding. “Very well. I suppose this is what I deserve for wishing so often to visit Britain after I finished school.”

Henry is sensible enough not to continue to wear a Nazi uniform in the company of spies. He cleans it but doesn’t Transfigure it, which might make it harder to return it to its original state. Instead, he retrieves a proper non-magical suit that was shrunk and tucked away in his wallet. Salazar has only to glance at Henry’s camel-colored wool suit to know it was modeled after daytime offerings of the 1860s in weave, cut, and style, though it was obviously tailored within the last five years. Lingering in the past to the point of stagnation has been Wizarding Britain’s preference since the creation of the Ministry, but at least Henry has both good taste and the intelligence to find something close to what is worn by the non-magical right now.

Salazar hasn’t bothered with magical robes in a full century unless he literally has no choice, curious about the direction men’s fashion turned. The previously worn long coats had been all but interchangeable with robes, but once those were abandoned, breeches went through several swift changes until they became what Nizar refers to as _proper_ trousers. By 1855, his brother’s portrait had blatantly stared at Salazar wearing a new suit and said the last time he’d seen that sort of outfit, he’d been in Diagon Alley. In 1993.

“Half of them haven’t managed to get over the fact that the 1600s ended quite some time ago,” Salazar had responded at the time. “Somehow, I find I am not much surprised.” The late 1800s apparently stood as the provider of the rest of 1990s Wizarding Britain’s _modern_ fashion palette beyond that of robes. Salazar has kept a great deal of his clothing from the 19th century stored away under Preservation Charms for just that reason, though it’s been decades since the non-magic consigned those styles to the metaphorical rubbish bin.

“What of women’s fashion?” he asked Nizar at the time. “Which century or decade will they decide to become stuck upon by 1993?”

Nizar’s portrait made a very specific face in response. “Take everything from the last thousand years and stuff it into a blender, Sal,” he’d said, which had then necessitated the explanation of blenders. Salazar pointed out that women’s fashion seemed to be changing at that rate of speed, regardless. Then, much like technology, women’s garments decided that the turn of the century meant it was time to change ever faster.

Salazar quite understands the griping of older gentlemen in regards to the rapid rise of women’s hemlines. He would never deny a lady the right to her own choices, but except for a few visits to certain other cultures, the idea of seeing that much of a woman’s bared leg in public has been anathema in Europe for Salazar’s _entire fucking life_.

By contrast, the 20th century has been rather sedate in regards to men’s fashion. A man’s jacket, waistcoat, neckties, trousers, bowties, or shoes haven’t changed very much. Their concerns have focused on shirts and hats, with the wealthy also concerning themselves with fabrics, pins, and elaborate pocket watch chains.

Salazar will readily admit that he is still particular in what he will wear. Too many tailors have no idea what to do with striped fabric; spats are ludicrous; the current baggy shapelessness of men’s trousers almost makes him long for hose. The theft of the northern clans’ colors, now dubbed _plaid_ , is oft applied to any surface that will hold still. Wool-blended silk makes up for some of the negatives, though its quality in the West has fallen in the last few centuries, even among magical circles. He’s glad for the continued expectation that a man’s jacket and coat both have plentiful pockets, though he put aside the pocket watch when the leather-banded Santos wristwatch became an accepted and popular substitute.

He discovered early on that Marie feels similarly regarding clothing, fashion, and practicality. Marie was born and raised in Paris; like any Paris magician capable of looking beyond their own nose, she wears fashionable non-magical clothing. She once horrified Alexis by confessing she hasn’t worn a witch’s robe since she finished schooling at Beauxbatons. The other magicians among them wear non-magical clothing out of necessity unless they’re visiting Nurmengard, but it’s a learned endurance, not a preference.

“Is that the same suit you wore for the grenade incident?” Henry asks from the bedroom doorway. “I’d thought it too bloodstained to be recovered.”

Salazar gestures for the man to enter the room. He left the door open just to signal the invitation, but he and his fellow spies have disregarded certain courtesies for quite a while now. Henry, just joining their fight, is unaware of that. “It isn’t. I was fond enough of the material to have a spare made in the same style. I’m glad I thought to do so, as it’s now the last Muggle clothing I have in Germany not stained or destroyed by our delightful shenanigans.” Bloodstains can be removed by magic, but it’s easier if the blood is fresh. Salazar has long known that clothing worn when he receives wounds meant to be fatal often refuse to be cleansed at all. Fortunately, he has clothing still at the Willow House, though he’ll need to Transfigure slight adjustments. “I’m almost ready. We can depart if Marie has returned.”

“She hasn’t yet.” Henry falls silent as Salazar all but glares at his reflection while he knots the dark green silk tie. He misses the freedom of an open-collared shirt, but needs must. He will admit to being fond of the tie, at least, especially now that the collars of men’s shirts are no longer tall, starched creations that slice at the underside of his jaw. The suit’s jacket and trousers are silken wool in pale grey. The tie is a sharp contrast to both the jacket and his white shirt, but between the paler colors, dyed dark hair, and his lacking beard, Salazar appears much younger than his true physical age. He misses his beard, but facial hair is much harder to keep properly dyed. The potion to change hair color all over the body makes him ill for days afterwards, so he gave up on both.

Salazar sits down to lace up his short-topped boots, trying not to grimace as he does so. He still feels bruised from head to toe, and his muscles haven’t yet forgiven him for grenade-launched acrobatics. “You’re staring at me.”

“I was thinking it to be a nice suit.”

“I much prefer black, but too many people ask me who I’m grieving for when I wear it for anything except formal affairs.” Salazar finishes lacing up his boots and gazes at Henry in expectation.

Henry flushes in mild embarrassment at being so easily read. “I was being honest, even if that wasn’t all I was thinking of.”

Salazar gestures with one hand. “We seem to have a few minutes, and I’m quite difficult to offend. Please say whatever you like.”

“It isn’t Grindelwald who you saw while scrying upon the water.”

Salazar’s eyes widen at Henry’s certainty. “No. Unfortunately, it was not.”

Henry sighs. “And yet here you are in Europe, spying on both Muggle Nazis and the aptly named Wizarding Nazis who are loyal to Grindelwald. Why?”

Salazar smiles. He is being tested, but it’s testing fueled by a desire to know, to understand. “If you see something that is wrong, and you can do something to stop it, should you not do so?”

Henry’s nod has the slow, grim quiet of steely resolve. “That would be one of the reasons why I’m here.”

Marie has traveled by Desplazarse before with Salazar’s assistance and is accustomed to the single leap it takes for Salazar to arrive at the Continent’s northern shorelines. Henry is not, and gasps in alarm before the gasp turns to quick intuition. “Because you said you’re an Earth-Speaker, yes?”

Salazar nods, pleased that Henry was so quick to recognize it, but he is also distracted. He didn’t take them directly north or due west to a German or French coast, but directly southwest to stand on vibrant green cliffs overlooking the sun-glistening ocean. He sits down where he stands, closing his eyes. Salazar is vaguely aware of Marie pulling Henry and Alexis away, explaining Salazar’s brief need to rest before crossing the Channel.

When the Great War began in earnest, Salazar checked with the Elves of Ur Leial, making certain the elves who dwelled in his ancestral home would be well. When the true horror of the war penetrated his shocked senses, Salazar had hidden not just the keep, but the whole of his father’s lands. None can find this place but himself and Nizar; not even guests Salazar brings himself would be able to find his home again on their own.

This is the first time he’s returned since that was done. He should have come back long before now.

Salazar isn’t much surprised when a single elf pops into place beside him. Every elf born in Gipuzkoa took Basque names, though some of the ancient elves are still identifiable by their jewelry and their French names. “Hello, Toda.”

“You’ve been gone too long, Marqués.” Toda sniffs in disapproval. “Shall we prepare the keep for guests, or will you be departing again?”

“My apologies to you and your clan, Toda,” Salazar says, glancing at her. The silver jewelry she wears is brilliant in the sunshine. “The war has stolen all of my time, and recently attempted to steal all of my blood with it. When my chance comes to rest, you will see me again…or it will be my brother who greets you. I hope it’s the former before the latter.”

Toda loses her formal air and lays her hand on Salazar’s shoulder. “It will be you,” she announces, and Disapparates in silence.

Her visit was a kind reminder. This is Gipuzkoa; this is still home, even if he hasn’t dwelled here in centuries. The land soothes the exhaustion of the war, the fatigue of that irritating call to put a monarch back on Spain’s empty throne.

Salazar managed one final visit with Alfonso XIII before the former king’s unexpected death in 1941, not yet fifty-five years of age. His named Heir, Infante Juan, is a good man who married well and already has four Heirs of his own. Juan is a known ally of the British who earned his place in their navy, but Salazar does not think Juan will be king. Juan is in no hurry to fight for it, not with Franco’s current stranglehold on Spanish politics and government.

Salazar doesn’t dare go anywhere near Francisco Franco. An assassination would make things worse for his kingdom right now, not better. Hitler also seems to have a knack for evading assassinations, given how many times such has failed in the last ten years. Those failures don’t even account for the magical attempts, leading Salazar to believe that the gods want Hitler to be defeated by united Allies. He has no idea why it must be so, but the bastard has survived far too many assassination attempts that should have _worked_.

Grindelwald is yet another difficulty. Several times since earning Gellert Grindelwald’s trust, Salazar has been tempted to lift his wand and have done with it. The first time Grindelwald turned his back on Salazar, Grindelwald presented him with the very circumstances that would allow his easy defeat.

Of course, Grindelwald’s rabid allies would immediately take offence to the death of their leader, and that could prove to be a painful experience. Very, very painful.

Salazar also doesn’t want the fucking Elder Wand. He held it in trust; he never wants to be its master. Besides, if Nizar’s portrait is recalling correctly—and Salazar does not doubt this—it is Albus Dumbledore who is meant to defeat Grindelwald. If Salazar attempts to change history, he isn’t the only one who would suffer the consequences.

Thus, he spies. Salazar smiles at Grindelwald’s terrible notion of humor and prays that someone will soon convince Albus Dumbledore to hurry along and kill the bastard.

Henry returns perhaps twenty minutes later, sounding out of breath and amazed. “The feel of this place—it’s incredible! I asked Marie if she could sense the same, but Marie only said I’ve had too little fresh air if I’m so easily impressed by a bit of greenery. My estate is in the countryside; I know that not to be the difficulty!”

Salazar smiles and pats the sun-warmed rock next to him. “Welcome to my homeland, Henry Potter.”

Henry accepts the invitation, settling into place. “Where are we?”

“This is Gipuzkoa, part of what is now known as the Basque Country on the northern Spanish coast. My father’s family dwelled here for many centuries before I inherited this land upon his death. My mother was of Burgos,” he adds, answering Henry’s unspoken question. “My sister inherited what was hers.”

“Incredible,” Henry murmurs. “I’ve seen Burgos once before, though I’d be concerned to go near it now given the current regime. I thought it quite lovely, but this…this feels…”

“How long has your family lived in its current home?” Salazar asks when Henry trails off into silence.

“Oh, time out of mind, honestly. I’m not sure anyone in the family could tell you how long we’ve owned the lands around Godric’s Hollow—excepting Ilchester, of course.”

Salazar is three steps closer with one question asked. “Do you have children, Henry?”

Henry sounds a bit bewildered by the change of subject, but as it is a polite question, he answers. “Just the one, I’m afraid, though our Monty is a good lad, the best a father could ask for. He turned fourteen last month, and will see his fourth year of Hogwarts in September. Do you have children, Saul?”

“I did, once. They’re all gone now.”

“I’m so terribly sorry.”

“I don’t mind,” Salazar replies, and truthfully he does not. He misses each of them, but they lived their lives as they chose. He was glad of their happiness, even if he still feels that many of his children died too young. “Fortunata and Zuri were the children of my first wife. Ouen, Imeyna, and Betisa were the children of my second. Berenguela was not the result of a marriage, as her mother was not in the position to choose such a thing for herself. My fourth wife granted me Sibylla, Isidore, and Medeia. I had three other children who were conceived in the same manner as Berenguela, though only one survived long enough to have children of his own.”

When Salazar finally opens his eyes, he finds Henry gazing at him in sympathy, and no little envy. “What happened to them?”

“Time,” Salazar says, “and disease. By the time the Spanish Influenza was done with my family, there were no descendants left but a sparse branch of the non-magical who dwell in the United States, and two magical families dwelling somewhere in England. The branch of one is down to but a single family, but the branch of the other must also be sparse, because I could never find them.”

“A sparse branch.” Henry raises an eyebrow. “You said you’d been looking for me.”

“Did I?” Salazar can’t remember doing so, but Henry has no reason to lie. “I blame blood loss.”

“Given you’d lost quite a bit of it, that’s understandable.” Henry takes a moment to straighten the rucked fabric of his trousers. “My wife and I wanted more children, but we’d decided to wait until we were a bit older before having them. I was not quite thirty-six and Elizabetha thirty when our son was born, and yet it still seems that we waited too long. My parents had my sister and myself, and thought that enough until my sister’s death, but my mother still managed to give birth to my brother Charlus just on the verge of a witch losing her ability to bear children at all. Elizabetha, however, is the only child of an only child of an only child. We’ve not given up; I’m fifty years of age, and she is forty-four, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the Pure-blood’s Curse reared its head. Charles—that’s Charlus—and his wife Dorea have been trying for a child for the last five years, but unless I return to London and discover otherwise, they’ve had no luck at all.”

“You’ve my sympathies.”

“Thank you,” Henry responds, inclining his head. “I can scarcely contemplate the idea of losing Monty when you’ve lost so many. I know your sympathy is no falsehood.” He quiets for a moment, toeing at the grass near his foot with his shoe before his eyes focus on the ocean. “Coming here reminds me of what it is like to return home after I’ve been away from it for far too long. We’re family, aren’t we?”

Salazar nods. “Distantly, but yes.”

Henry doesn’t look surprised, but thoughtful, as if considering the idea. “How did that come to be?”

“That, I’m afraid, is quite the long story.” Salazar turns his head as he hears Marie walking back. She’d hate to know he’d caught her peaceful expression, one hand held out to feel the grass as the wind blows it against her fingertips. He quickly turns his attention to Alexis. She is willingly following Marie, but her eyes are glazed from the Calming Draughts that are enabling her to make the journey without panic.

“Survive this war, Henry,” Salazar says. “By then you’ll have decided exactly how much of that story you wish for me to tell you.”


	3. The House of Potter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A break from the front lines isn't really, not after the Blitz, but at least there is a significant lack of Nazis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Screeched over by @norcumii!
> 
> Note the Second: There is usually a tradition where I do the Hobbit-y thing of tossing out an extra chapter for a birthday in the household, and Eldest Podling's 15th was this past Tuesday. Unfortunately, I felt like...like...something. Still not sure wtf, but the spoons were not with me. Or the forks. Just stabbity things. Will possibly try to make up for that with an extra chapter this weekend. <3

Their arrival in London, mid-afternoon on 14th August, is unremarked upon because they wisely decide _not_ to inform Command that they’ve returned to English soil. Salazar and Marie’s immediate concern is for Alexis; Henry, a gentleman first and foremost, agrees with them. They will be safely ensconcing her in the Willow House before debriefing with anyone.

Salazar owns three properties in London, and after considering the concentration of Germany’s bombing raids upon the city, offers Marie the one to the north of Edward Square in Islington. They arrive to find part of the southern area destroyed, and everything to the west of the building obliterated, but the building which houses the flat and its immediate northern neighbors survived the worst of the Blitz.

“Good God,” Henry murmurs. “And still they fared better than so much of London.”

“There is a very deep cellar beneath the building for emergencies,” Salazar reassures Marie, who looks concerned for her continued existence. Salazar should know; he had that cellar built along with the building, and owns as much of the land around it as modern London allowed him to get away with—which is almost none at all. “If that is not enough, there is an entrance to the Underground nearby. You’ll need that when venturing off to MI6’s current headquarters, anyway, as the bombing drove them quite literally underground.”

Marie reaches out to turn the switch for the lights upon entering the flat. Salazar isn’t surprised when nothing happens. “There are plenty of candles, and heat and water are still provided by magic, not modern means.” He’d never had the chance to upgrade this flat as he had the Willow House, and now is glad of the delay. London is doing its best to restore the electricity and water to every surviving residence, but so much of the city still lies in ruins. Salazar doubts the work will be completed until the military units return home at war’s end, adding to the number of able-bodied people capable of sweeping away debris, repairing what can be salvaged, and rebuilding the rest.

While Marie helps to see a stumbling Alexis into a bedroom, Henry takes himself and Salazar to a modest, single bedroom flat near to the Underground MI6 offices in Victoria. Aside from the parks, Victoria has been all but pounded flat by the Blitz.

The buildings closer to the river fared better, including 10 Downing Street. “Churchill still works there during the day, which is either bravery or insanity,” Henry says when Salazar asks. “Otherwise, I’m given to understand that Britain’s Prime Minister lives somewhere underground in Mayfair.”

“There isn’t much left of Mayfair for it to still be going by that name.”

“Of course not,” Henry agrees. “If there is nothing left, there is nothing left to bomb, and the bunkers remain secure. Technically, I’m not even meant to still be living up here, given my proximity to the worst of the bombing sites in the area, but I can’t stand sleeping below ground. I’m gone much of the time, anyway, so it’s all but a moot point.”

Henry parts from Salazar’s company for a few hours, leaving Salazar to the mild comforts of the flat. By some miracle, it still has running water for the bathroom. Salazar glares at the showerhead above the tub and tries three different charms before it will automatically heat the cold water flowing from the pipes. Baths are well and good for aches and pains, but the advent of the shower was a bloody gods-sent blessing. He feels truly clean for the first time in months.

When Henry returns just before the dinner hour, he has not one person with him, but five. His younger brother Charlus, born in 1920, prefers to be called Charles. He resembles Henry acutely, though Charles has stark brown hair, blue eyes with faint hints of violet, and a light bronze cast to his skin. It makes Salazar wonder what sort of lineage Henry and Charles can claim aside from his own.

Dorea Potter is a slight, petite woman with wit and fire that make her seem far larger. She is recognizably a Black, bearing the family’s famous grey eyes to accompany her curling brown hair, which is cut in a modern style that would scandalize Wizarding Britain. She is also nearly as pale as Salazar’s long-lost Orellana, but it isn’t a sign of ill-health, merely familial influence.

Henry introduces his wife as Elizabetha Potter. Despite her name, it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that Elizabetha’s lineage is not European white. Salazar discovers in short order that Elizabetha is a practicing Hindu who still identifies as Jat, though the Lohats—renamed Fleamont under the ludicrous tenets of British Imperialism—left that region of India nearly three centuries ago. Her eyes are kind, and steadily insist on being solidly brown, highlighted with the barest hint of sienna. Elizabetha reminds Salazar very much of the female magicians he once met in the ancient _hindavi_ kingdoms, the weavers of magic who lived and breathed its strength with unending, even-tempered grace. Her curling black hair, unbound, might possibly fall to her knees, and is also trying to escape all of the hairpins holding it in place. Between that and her son’s maniacally curly hair, Salazar is more certain than ever that he’s found his little brother’s family.

Elizabetha and Henry’s only child is named Fleamont, always referred to as Monty. He’s grown up in a household that mixes Christian, Hindu, and magical holidays together, and it shows in his vocal inflections, his easy blending Eastern and Western thought. Monty takes after Henry with his pale skin, but the boy’s wild brown hair reminds Salazar _so much_ of Nizar’s too-short hair that it almost causes him physical pain for the way it curls about, does whatever it wants. Monty didn’t inherit the eye color of his parents the boy’s eyes are their own unique color of brown, marked by yellows and gold edging. In Salazar’s youth, Monty would be ready for magical adulthood, as his fourteenth birthday was in June, but this is no magician ready for an apprenticeship. Monty is a child still, and Salazar finds he is glad of it.

George William Potter prefers to go by Will, is Henry’s first cousin. He serves an example to Salazar that if Nizar had paternal family remaining to him after 1st November 1981, they would have been easy to find. Will looks exceptionally similar to Henry and Charles, brown-haired and blue-eyed, and has the same faint bronze skin as Charles.

“I’d love to introduce you to my parents, but alas, it’s two years too late for that,” Henry confides in a low voice while his family is distracted by discussions on what establishment they’re going to fall upon like ravenous wolves for dinner. “My mother was one of the last Westenbergs, named Adelina, married to my father Richard, the youngest of his siblings. They were…they were already old when this war began, and very set in their ways. They chose to live in our London townhouse rather than the manor, and relied far too much on magic to protect them even after Charles and I warned them of the dangers of the Blitz. Mother was killed in January 1940 when a bomb fell too near to a home she was visiting.”

Salazar lowers his head. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Henry replies, and lets out a deep sigh. “Afterwards, Father was cautious and respectful of the damage Muggle armaments could do, but I think he missed my mother too much. He died just after his one-hundred-first birthday in December 1941.”

“Again, you have my sympathies.”

Henry nods. “I don’t think Father had many years left to him, regardless. He retired from the Wizengamot in 1920 and left it to me to carry on the family traditions, much to the irritation of many, who believed I stole the seat from rightfully deserving older relatives who didn’t actually want the damned thing.”

Salazar makes an amused noise. The Wizengamot hasn’t changed its ridiculous ways since its inception.

“Will and his wife Charlotte live in the London townhouse now, and they’ll be hosting the family here in the city until Monty departs for school on the first. That might change if the Germans decide upon another Blitz, but for now it should be safe enough.”

Salazar has suddenly gone from having no Potter magicians in his life to six of them, and Henry claims there are several others. Most of them are currently in Europe, fighting in magical or non-magical military groups, or acting in supporting roles for those who are fighting or spying. Henry’s battalion and its mixed soldiers is the only one in Europe, but not the only one of its kind. The others are only waiting for next summer’s planned invasion to join the fighting.

“We’ve even acquired one of the Dumbledores, and that was a shock. I hadn’t heard much of anything about the family after the last two brothers left Godric’s Hollow,” Henry told Salazar that very morning.

It had been a hard-fought battle for Salazar to keep his tone, his expression, from betraying his sudden and intense interest. Two Dumbledores? Salazar only knew of the one. “Oh? I’d thought Dumbledore to be a teacher.”

Henry nodded. “That would be Albus Dumbledore, Head of the Transfiguration Department at Hogwarts. Monty says he has quite the flair for demonstrating Transfiguration in class, but he’s still not certain about what sort of teacher he makes. But no, the man in the battalion is Aberforth Dumbledore, the younger brother. If you ever meet a tall mountain of a Scottish wizard with ginger hair fit to match his temperament, you’ve quite likely met Aberforth. He says he runs an inn in Hogsmeade, but I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing it for myself.” Henry snorted in amusement. “Aberforth put down his roots in Hogsmeade before Albus was hired on at Hogwarts. I imagine that didn’t go over well.”

“Scandal?” Salazar asked, curious.

“More a sad tale, but one that is not mine to tell,” Henry had replied, and like a proper English gentlemen, would speak no more of it.

Salazar telephones Marie—who goes into temporary ecstasy when she realizes she has a dependable telephone line once more—to request an invitation for them to enter what is currently _her_ flat. With permission granted, Salazar and Henry give the others landmarks for the brief journey.

Monty clings to his father’s arm when they Apparate back to Islington. He doesn’t look to be much fond of Apparition, but he voices no complaints.

Salazar takes a moment to Summon a bottle of well-aged and _rare_ bottle of rosé from the building’s cellar, one that was made predominantly with true Merlot blanc. On Britain’s current black market for rare delicacies, he could sell such a bottle and make a fortune, but gods, what would be the point? He would much rather present it as a gift to Marie for hosting an impromptu crowd.

Marie accepts the bottle and promptly bursts into the first tears he has ever seen her cry. Dorea is quick to rush forward to hug and comfort a stranger, which causes Salazar to glance at Henry, head tilted in query. Henry nods; Dorea, then, is the family member he will ask to act as a caretaker for Alexis.

No wonder Dorea Black wed a Potter. She would not have fit in among the other members of her mad family.

“Are you really a spy?” Monty is asking Marie, who is drying her face with Elizabetha’s handkerchief when Salazar slips off to the only occupied bedroom. Alexis is still resting, sleeping off the draught that saw her peacefully accept the necessity of Desplazarse to escape the Continent.

Salazar sits down in the chair at her bedside for a moment, needing the brief bit of quiet. Elsa had asked Alexis if she wanted to forget what happened to her with a careful Obliviation spell, but Alexis refused. Salazar was the one to ask if she would like to try the Deflection Charm instead, but Alexis surprised him by refusing that, as well.

“I do not want to simply _forget_ ,” Alexis had growled, weeping even in the midst of her fury. “There are too many who do not have such an option! If they must suffer, I will not place myself above them. To do so would be selfish.”

“No. It would be a means of caring for yourself when there are so many we cannot care for at all,” Salazar reminded her gently, but Alexis would hear none of their arguments. She would not listen to Aurelius when he attempted to remind her of the terrible limitations they’ve faced for many years now. It did not even help to remind Alexis that she could not continue to fight Grindelwald’s plans without allowing herself the means to heal.

Salazar could have warned Aurelius not to have tried those words, had he known they were going to be spoken. He has lived and breathed for nearly ten centuries. He knows when someone is done with war, and Alexis is done with this one, and with spying—and if she had her way, she would be done with her existence. He will settle for preserving her life, and hope she will find peace after the war’s end.

The war has to end. It cannot go on like this.

Gods, please, may this war end soon.

There are still restaurants and cafés open in London, carrying on as though bombs haven’t been falling upon the city for several years. The Potters are as well-acquainted with Islington as they are with London proper, and their choice of restaurant provides excellent service despite the limited nature of the menu. Salazar sees the glimmer of relief in the eyes of the waiter and judges him to be the owner, one who is grateful for the patronage. He mentally adds the restaurant to his list of acceptance London venues; if it survives the war, Salazar plans to return. Their chef is a bloody genius.

Will and Charlotte play host during the meal with the easy grace of Pure-bloods who haven’t let wealth or status go to their heads. Salazar observes them, much as he watches the others, and easily draws several conclusions. Charlotte is either a Half-blood or born of disowned magical relatives. Will is older than Henry by several years; he would have been one of those in line for the Potter Wizengamot seat who refused to accept it. Given the current Pure-blood domination of Wizarding politics in Britain, Will likely knew he wouldn’t be the best choice to represent the family.

Charlotte has pale brown hair with odd undertones of color that Salazar couldn’t put name to. Unlike the others, her hair is curled by artificial or magical means. Salazar thinks she might be a distant cousin of Dorea, given she also has the famous Black grey eyes, but there is nothing of the Black family in her mannerisms. A child of one of those that Lycorus cast out, possibly, and one who longs for a child of her own. Charlotte’s eyes linger too long and too fondly on Monty for Salazar to believe otherwise.

The next morning, Marie accompanies Salazar to the Willow House. She learns the words to the charm that will allow safe passage to the home’s front door. It takes another magical signal, as well as Salazar introducing Marie to the wards, for the house to be convinced to allow her entry. If he can trust her to keep their people alive for so long while trapped in Nazi Germany, he feels no difficulty entrusting her with the means to enter his home.

She turns around once in each room, observing the Willow House’s modernized interior, whitewashed walls, older furniture, and the ancient Persian rugs upon the floor, kept plush and colorful by magical saturation and Preservation Charms. “It’s peaceful here,” Marie admits, gazing at a portrait of Salazar’s last wife. Isis smiles at Marie once her portrait realizes the inspection is not a critical one.

“And it will remain peaceful as long as a certain someone keeps his opinions to himself.”

Nizar’s portrait stops watching Marie and turns to Salazar. “You look like shit.”

Salazar glances upwards in a bid for patience. “I’ve not seen you since August in 1939, and that is the first thing you say to me?”

“Yes, because you look like death warmed over, _idiota!_ ”

Marie stares at the other portrait. “You argue with yourself. I suppose that’s an effective method of coping with your own thoughts.”

“This is not myself. This is a portrait of my younger brother. Nizar, this is Marie, formerly of Paris, though we hope she soon will be again. Marie, my younger brother.”

“Your brother.” Marie studies the painting with a spy’s unleashed intensity. “Why is he not assisting us?”

Salazar has to swallow against the sudden pain in his chest. “My brother is exactly where he is meant to be for this war, Marie.”

Marie glances at Salazar, frowns, and nods. “All right. I’m satisfied that this place will do wonders for Alexis, and I’m already fond of Henry’s choice for her guardian. Even Paris knows of the magical Black family’s reputation. The Blacks are ruthless, and Dorea will know when that ruthlessness might be necessary. Take me back to London, please.” Then she glances once more at Nizar’s portrait. “Be kind to Alexis. She was tortured recently. By men.”

Nizar stares back at her. “Call it what it is. She was raped by many.”

“And is that not torture?”

The portrait inclines his head. “Point to you, then. I’m never cruel to the undeserving, Madam Marie. Sal, you’d better give me a decent bloody summary when you return with Alexis. And who the hell is Henry?”

“Bloody is exactly the sort of summary you shall receive,” Salazar replies. He does not yet want to answer that last question, nor does he want to tell the portrait about the incident with the grenade, but trying to keep it secret won’t work. Nizar is just as conniving as a portrait as he is a person.

Salazar asks Marie to see herself out, as he must give the house a quick onceover before temporarily passing it along as a residence for Alexis. “ _Tell me this war ends,_ ” he says to Nizar’s portrait in Parseltongue. “ _Please._ ”

“ _All wars end. Whether or not this end leads into the beginning of another war?_ ” Nizar shakes his head. “ _I don’t know, Sal. A child’s primary school history book is not nearly that informative._ ”

Salazar manages to share his desire to keep the number of those who know of his home’s location to a small group without causing insult. When he and Marie bring Alexis to the Willow House that afternoon, they are joined only by Elizabetha, Henry, Charles, and Dorea Potter.

“Oh, what a place you’ve made for yourself here.” Elizabetha closes her eyes in pleasure. “The magic beneath the bedrock sings so well. It reminds me of the manor, Henry!”

“A well-chosen home, then,” Henry comments. Salazar nods, deciding not to mention he chose the land before he chose what sort of home would be built upon it.

“And you’ve a proper radiogram!” Dorea exclaims, bidding Alexis to come and see. It would be covered in dust by now but for the housekeeping charms Salazar embedded in the house’s foundation stones. “We’ll be able to listen to the Muggle programs as well as the Wizarding Wireless, won’t we, Saul?”

Salazar nods, though his eyes are on the portrait giving him a suspicious look from a frame half-hidden by shadow. “It does both. Please be careful with the newer recordings. They cannot be played with the gramophone I still own. The steel needle would destroy them.”

Marie tucks Alexis’s arm against her own when Alexis’s attention begins to drift. Such has happened often since her physical wounds were healed, and it worries Salazar. He can’t tell if it is shell-shock that will fade, or some deeper damage that will linger for life. The usual healer’s charms avail him nothing, as physically, there is nothing wrong with her any longer.

“Come along,” Marie says to Alexis. “The only locked door down this hallway hosts Saul’s bedroom, but he says you can have your pick of any of the others. He certainly won’t be here to bother you.”

Alexis gives Marie a faint nod before looking to Dorea. “What of you? Should you not choose?”

Dorea smiles gently. “I will, darling, but only after you’ve chosen yours. I need to be certain there is nothing else Saul should tell me in regards to watching over his home while he continues to absent himself.”

Marie tugs Alexis in the direction of the bedrooms nearest the end of the house, away from any potential, startling noises that might emerge from the sitting room or the nearby kitchen. “Oh, gods,” Salazar says under his breath. He hopes Alexis shows improvement by the war’s end. He _desperately_ hopes Aurelius survives to see Grindelwald fall, else Alexis might break further upon hearing news of her brother’s death.

“Truthfully, is there anything else I should know?” Dorea asks. “This will be a good way to spend my time when Charles follows Henry to Europe.”

“Which I still think is a foolish idea,” Henry utters in a flat voice.

Charles rolls his eyes. “I have no plans on dying for any Nazi, Muggle or Wizarding. Besides, maybe I’ll have a returning war hero’s luck and actually manage to get my wife pregnant!”

Henry snorts. “If that actually worked, you would have a nephew older than you are.”

Dorea seems resigned to Charles’s intentions, and ignores the brothers’ bickering to continue her conversation. “Well, Saul? I’d prefer to be honest with Alexis as much as is possible. That poor woman. Alexis was such a rock before this happened, wasn’t she?”

Salazar nods. “She was exactly that, but every rock can be shattered. I am hoping this is a temporary sort of shattering, but it was far too dangerous to chance allowing her to recover in Germany.”

“So Henry has said,” Dorea agrees, sighing. “The house, then?”

“The Willow House is under a Loyalty Charm, hence the rather long phrase I taught you all before we walked down the path,” Salazar explains. “You’ll not be bothered by nosy neighbors. Please do not invite anyone here, not even by Floo, unless they are standing in this room right now.” His neighbors were so bloody confused when his house, a known part of the village since the 1600s, disappeared in 1939 as Salazar prepared to leave. They’ll be confused again when it reappears after the close of the war, but answering the questions of the bewildered is a price he is willing to pay. “I will own no elves, who are meant to be free beings, so any supplies you require will have to be retrieved by Floo, and should be sent only by Elizabetha or Marie. Otherwise, you’ll have naught to concern yourself with but for the nosy bugger who is trying to peer around the frame behind me without being seen.”

“Tale-teller,” Nizar says, though Salazar doesn’t turn around to see if Nizar has revealed himself in the frame behind him. The expressions on the others’ faces tells him all he needs to know. “I suppose you must be the mysterious Henry my brother mentioned.”

Henry smiles. “I am. Henry Simon Potter is my name. This is my wife, Elizabetha. Dorea is our dear sister through her marriage to my brother Charlus, though he much prefers Charles. Who are you, then? You look a great deal like Saul, but that nose of yours is a bit different than his.”

“Unless you’ve since Transfigured it,” Elizabetha teases Salazar. He is truly starting to enjoy her company; she has a wicked sense of humor, and isn’t afraid to voice it.

“I am Nizar, Sal’s younger brother. Alas that I myself am unavailable, and you’re stuck with a bit of canvas instead,” Nizar’s portrait replies. “And no, there is no oddity regarding our differing names. We are Spanish and Basque, and our Euskaran family remembers the Arabic influence in Iberia quite well.”

“So I see. It’s fascinating to meet you,” Dorea says. Salazar notices as he turns to the side, able to view Nizar and his guests, that Dorea has captured Nizar’s full attention. Henry, Salazar notes, is studying the portrait, cataloging details in a way that makes Salazar wonder if Nizar had a flash of Divination before this particular portrait was painted. Nizar’s truis, boots, and black robes, which seem to lack almost all ornamentation unless one looks very closely, are not much removed from what magicians are wearing for robes right now.

“Are you…” Nizar tilts his head and studies Dorea. “You have familiar features, particularly your eyes. Were you a Black before your marriage?”

Dorea grimaces a bit at being recognized. “I was, yes. Dorea Aurora Black, sister of Pollux, Marius, Cassiopeia, and Walburga, though my poor older brother Marius was cast out for being a Squib before I could ever know him properly, and I’ve no idea what became of him. My family has not disowned me the way they did him, but they do not speak to me if they can avoid it because I married Charles.”

“I am very sorry for their behavior towards you,” Nizar says formally. “I hope you’ve found the happiness you deserve among the family surrounding you now.”

“Oh, now I certainly believe them to be brothers.” Henry chuckles. “They both have the same silver tongues.”

“Practice makes perfect,” Nizar replies. “How did you happen to meet my brother, Henry?”

“I was sent to retrieve him for a long overdue debriefing. We found each other when a bomb landed in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then some of the locals decided to take advantage of the opportunity the explosions provided, and attempted to rid Nuremberg of two more assumed Nazis with a grenade.”

“With a grenade.” Nizar’s expression morphs into a full-blown glower that he directs at Salazar. “You did something stupid, didn’t you?”

“Would you rather the man be dead, little brother?”

Nizar sighs and looks at Henry. “He threw himself atop the grenade, didn’t he.”

Henry smiles and nods. “I did appreciate that such an act likely saved my life, though the idea of having to report back to my superiors that the man I’d been sent to retrieve was deceased was something I did _not_ look forward to. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary. I carried him to a safe place with a capable medic myself.”

Nizar raises both eyebrows before bowing in gratitude. “Thank you for doing so, Henry Potter. As for you, _idiota_ , I am yelling at you later,” he says, but Salazar doesn’t miss the way Nizar’s eyes linger on Elizabetha, whose hair is now straining to escape tightly coiled braids. Several short, thin strands have already succeeded, and are attempting to reach for the ceiling.

“Please reserve the yelling for the end of the war,” Salazar replies. “I still have to deal with whatever awaits us in London.”

Dorea sees them properly to the door. “Marie, do keep in touch. Saul has a proper telephone, and it would be nice to have company from both my sister and yourself when you’re not busy.”

“My child is off to Hogwarts, and my family off to war. I’ll have little else to do. If you don’t mind that I visit as well, of course,” Elizabetha says to Salazar.

Salazar shakes his head. “You are standing here. That should make it obvious enough, but if you’re requesting formality: Elizabetha Potter, you are welcome in my home.”

Elizabetha seems pleased by the courtesy. “Thank you, Saul Luiz.”

Salazar had expected to pass that night alone, but Henry and Charles must have bid their spouses a proper goodbye that morning. The three of them share Henry’s London flat that night. Henry offers to share his bed, but Salazar doesn’t want to get used to the luxury. Charles claims that he’s a mere twenty-five years old, and Henry should enjoy the pleasures of his own bed while it lasts.

Henry convinces Charles to sleep on the sofa and turns the lanterns down low after bidding Salazar goodnight, closing the bedroom door behind him. There is a bit of a pallet on the floor, but Salazar doesn’t think he’ll be using it tonight. He feels more at ease sitting in a faded patterned armchair, peering out the window at London’s quiet, unlit streets.

It’s so odd to see this city dark again, painted only by night’s shades of blue and violet. It also stirs a great deal of memory. Shakespeare. Isis. The fires. The occasional outbreak of plague. James I’s sudden ascension to the throne, which put Scotland firmly under the thumb of England. The gunpowder plot. Raleigh’s execution. The “scandal” of James I’s named husband, which really was not much of a scandal at all until Puritan-influenced thought saturated the idea. The Bishops’ Wars, which Salazar had involved himself on behalf of Scotland. English civil war, followed almost immediately by the importation of tea. Revolutions. Rights. So many people who are long dead, but for a time, Salazar and Isis had called them friends. Then it was over, and Salazar was left with only himself for company after a riotous century. He’ll readily admit he hasn’t been much for socializing since then.

If Salazar is reading the situation correctly, Henry is not just interested in Saul Luiz for their distant kinship, or for how old he is, though Salazar refuses to name that number. He isn’t much fond of dwelling upon it. Henry is attempting to claim Salazar as a friend.

It’s a harsh jolt for Salazar to realize he hasn’t truly had anyone he’d consider a friend, that he has not socialized beyond the requirements of polite society, in nearly three centuries. Even he and his fellow spies do not name each other friend, fearful of yet another loss. By war’s end, perhaps that will change, but for now…

For now, Charles snores. Salazar lets out a faint laugh and returns to his thoughts. The man will learn soon enough that spies do not have the luxury of snoring.

Salazar resists the siren song of his curiosity until the next morning, when the three of them walk to the entrance to the SIS’s claimed part of the Underground. “Fleamont? Truly?” he asks Henry in a burst of disbelief. Henry hadn’t struck him as the sort to inflict that sort of name upon an innocent child.

Charles starts laughing. “I was only nine years old at the time, and I warned my brother that he’d regret doing that!”

Salazar glances at Henry, who is frowning and trying to ignore his own blush. “Why Fleamont?” he asks again.

“Elizabetha wanted him named after her family, as she is the last magical Fleamont in England. She foolishly left me to take care of filing Monty’s birth certificate, and I’d misunderstood her meaning…” Henry smiles in wry self-deprecation. “I thought she’d kill me when she discovered that our son’s name was not Lohat. We filed an amendment later and granted Monty a second given name of Lohat, but I spent a number of weeks in the figurative dog house for that blunder.”

“The worst part is that Mother and Father thought Fleamont to be a perfectly acceptable and proper British-sounding name,” Charles adds. “That’s when my brother realized that in all the excitement of finally having an Heir, he’d stopped thinking.”

“Mother and Father would have hated calling my son Lohat,” Henry says with a smile. “They would never let on, but truly they would have hated it.”

Henry leads them to a literal entrance to the Underground, one cordoned off and marked as in disuse. Salazar had expected something a bit less obvious. “Welcome to the new and rather damp offices of the Secret Intelligence Service, Section Six, MI6…they’ve never quite decided, but I suspect MI6 will stick.” Henry removes a card from his wallet and presents it to the security guards at the turnstile. “Henry Simon Potter, Section D. Saul Luiz, Section D. Charlus Alistair Potter, Section D,” he recites, and they’re waved inside. Salazar notes the rust forming on the turnstile from the damp air and charms his trousers clean.

“The second guard, left side. Wizard,” Charles mutters.

Salazar nods. “Muggle on the right. It does speak well of them really meaning all of that talk about inter-British cooperation. Henry, what is Section D?”

“Those of us specifically dealing with matters in Europe. A great deal of what MI6 concentrates on has to do with decryption, but it isn’t as if we aren’t trying to attain secrets the old-fashioned way, either.”

“Old-fashioned,” Salazar repeats, amused. Listening to the words people say has served him quite well for a very long time.

“Those of us at least trying to pay attention to the Muggle world think the next time a war is fought, we’ll be decrypting television signals instead of radio transmissions,” Charles says. “Personally, I think that’s complete shite.”

“Watch your language, little brother! Especially given who we’re about to meet,” Henry warns.

“I’ve met them,” Salazar says to Charles, who instantly picks up on Salazar’s unimpressed tone of voice. “Be just polite enough to still have your place in the SIS when it’s done with, and it will go fine.”

“Stop encouraging him to be a lout,” Henry murmurs as he opens the door. It’s been fit well to the converted doorway, but moisture is still beginning to warp the wood. “Gentlemen.”

“Mister Potter!” Churchill exclaims as he stands up. “Bloody hell, it’s good to see you in one piece. And you as well, Saul. Pleasure to meet you, Charles!”

“Henry.” Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon is slower to stand, but he does seem to respect Henry a great deal as they clasp hands. “Charles. Saul.”

“Ministers,” Salazar responds for him when Charles looks a bit shell-shocked. Salazar thinks he hasn’t spent nearly enough time in the Wizengamot if he still believes a politician to be worth any awe whatsoever. “Here I am presenting myself, very much not dead. Might I go back now?”

Winston laughs; Spencer-Moon manages a tense smile. “Still at it with the jokes!” Winston declares. “You’re holding up rather well, then.”

 _I wasn’t joking,_ Salazar thinks, but the comment served its purpose. Charles has lost his shock and is now trying not to laugh. He’s extremely intuitive, perhaps even more than his brother. He’ll make a brilliant intelligence officer.

“You can at least linger for a drink.” Winston holds up a decanter filled with dark violet, red-blue liquid. “Spanish import from the 1920s, back before all of that unpleasantness occurred.”

The unpleasantness in Spain began well before that particular decade, but Salazar is willing to let that comment pass. “I should never have let on how to properly bribe me into enduring your company, Winston.”

In short order, they’re all seated, though both Potters decline the drink. Wise of them, given their unfamiliarity with the liquor. It’s best to keep your heads clear during a war, even among your allies.

The debriefing lasts longer than Salazar prefers, especially as Winston’s cigar smoke begins to thicken. When it extends from the ceiling down far enough to enter Salazar’s nose, he gets out his wand and rids the room of it all with a gesture. Winston ignores the bit of magic except to nod in acknowledgement; Spencer-Moon looks utterly horrified at Salazar’s blatant disregard for the Statute. The Minister for Magic is not normally so twitchy about such things. Politics in Wizarding Britain must be more fraught than usual.

In truth, there isn’t much of import for Salazar to mention except for Grindelwald’s attempt to court the Soviet bloc. Grindelwald had tried the same with Spain, but gave up on it after Franco sent Grindelwald’s magical emissary back to Nurmengard in several pieces. Grindelwald also ceased all efforts on the Italian front, claiming a newfound hatred of Italians. It’s decent cover; the truth is that Grindelwald is intelligent enough to realize that Italy is already a weak point in the Axis.

Spencer-Moon sits back in his seat when the briefing is done. “Saul, professionally as well as personally, thank you for saving Henry’s life. We’re in desperate need of his brilliant guidance within the Wizengamot during these treacherous times. It will be difficult to maintain control with Charles following Henry off to Europe!”

Henry’s eyes narrow. “My wife is quite capable of sitting in the Potter seat during sessions of the Wizengamot, Leonard. You would be wise to listen to her.”

Salazar resists the urge to sigh, roll his eyes, or simply hex the Minister for Magic. Spencer-Moon is either playing up current non-magical nonsense about a woman’s “place” to ingratiate himself to Winston, or he actually believes that shit. He hasn’t yet learned his lesson with Winston, then: the man either likes you, or he doesn’t. Gods help you if it’s the latter and you still have to work with him.

Winston dips the end of his cigar into his glass before he resumes smoking. “You’ve been in that mess the longest, Saul. What do you think that Grindelwald twit will do after the Allies take Nuremberg?”

It’s refreshing to hear someone high in command speak of Nazi Nuremberg’s fall as a certainty instead of faint possibility. The plans for the northern and southern invasions must be going well. “Grindelwald acts the part of a mad fool to cover up the fact that he is neither,” Salazar replies. “He’ll not make any of Hitler’s mistakes, and he won’t surrender even after the other war is won. Grindelwald will dig in and focus his defences around Nurmengard. All of our Allies should expect thicker Wizarding Nazi patrols on the ground, but these won’t be like Hitler’s conscripts, the men drafted and shoved into a uniform without choice. Grindelwald’s allies all chose to follow him, and they are fanatically loyal. We will eventually bring the magical war to his door, but unless he ventures forth, it will not be a battle. It will be a siege, one Grindelwald has had plenty of time to prepare for.”


	4. Grindelwald

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It isn't reassuring for Salazar to know that Grindelwald is not as terrible as Voldemort will be. Not in the least.
> 
> Neither of them can out-perform the Nazis for sheer horror, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheer-flail-beta'd by @norcumii. 
> 
> Warnings at the End Notes if you feel like you might need them. I mean, the chapter's title is a hint all by itself that this isn't gonna be a fun chapter.
> 
> (Things do get better. It just takes a while for history to get with the program.)

18th August 1943

London, England

“If you can Apparate from northern Spain out from central Germany, why can’t you Apparate us all the way back to Nuremberg from here?” Charles asks.

Salazar wrinkles his nose at the scent of the Thames as it wafts in their direction. “I’m an Earth-Speaker, not an Elemental Magician. Deep bodies of water, especially oceans, are more difficult to cross.”

Henry looks intrigued. “What is an Elemental Magician, then? One in control of all four of the traditional magical aspects?”

“Over _all_ Elements,” Salazar corrects, smiling. “Think…oh…Myrddin Wyllt.”

“What makes you think Merlin was an Elemental Wizard?”

Salazar sighs at Charles’s insistence upon the gendered term. Henry is definitely the more well-traveled of the two brothers. “If you understand the capabilities of an Elemental Magician, the evidence in the historical records makes it a bit obvious. That does, however, require you ignore most of the sources printed in Wizarding Britain.”

Charles’s jaw falls open. “What? Why?”

“Because many of them are wrong.” Salazar sighs and shifts the bag he carries. All three of them have a bag of supplies slung over their backs treated with Undetectable Extension Charms. Marie suggested they do so once she realized Salazar was unaware of how much Nazi Germany had tightened down not just on delicacies, but was starting to claim shortages of _all_ goods. Nazi Germany’s loss of the Atlantic, and thus the loss of imported goods, is going to hit the civilians hard. The invasion will make things even worse.

“If the Germans have to subsist upon rations, that would please British citizens immensely,” Henry commented when Marie insisted on doubling their intended supplies. “We’ve been enduring them for years.”

“How bad is it?” Marie had asked, though she does not fear rations. Spies are used to random and oft meager meals.

“Let’s just say that my body was getting to be rather round from the comforts of middle age before this war began.”

Salazar holds out his arm. Charles looks as if he still wants to argue over Wizarding Britain’s historical sources, but reaches out to grip Salazar’s jacket. The moment Henry latches on, Salazar crosses the Channel. He chose to return by way of Normandy, and drops to the ground the moment they arrive, pulling Henry and Charles with him. There is a gun emplacement manned by Nazi soldiers not far from their position.

Salazar gestures for quiet before anyone can protest. Charles grimaces at the guards and holds up one finger, mimicking the wave of a wand. Salazar considers it, but finally deems it too suspicious. Then Charles disappears from view as Henry retrieves a very specific Cloak of Invisibility to shelter them all from sight.

“You might’ve mentioned you had that earlier,” Salazar says after Charles casts a sound-muffling charm.

“Why?” Henry asks, his expression far too innocent. Salazar shakes his head; sheltering under Henry Potter’s Cloak is a bizarre experience, and he can’t even explain his reasons to them.

Salazar glances around now that it is safer to do so. The right bank of the estuary for the river stops him cold. All he can smell is gunpowder, cordite, blood, viscera, death—

Henry slaps Salazar on the head, which breaks the haze of precognition. “It’s a wonder that hasn’t gotten you shot,” Henry whispers, scowling.

“It has,” Salazar mutters, shaking off the rest of what he just experienced. “This is going to be one of the Allied invasion points next year. I don’t know if the invasion will succeed, but success or fail, the price paid in blood will be steep.”

“Dear Merlin.” Henry looks at the beach, which seems no more than a peaceful bit of cold sand fronting the Channel. Salazar has already seen what it looks like as a battlefield. The memory of red wine reflecting blooded ocean waves leaves him feeling cold, and very much alone.

“Let’s go,” Charles finally says. “I’m in no mood to stay until we’re witnessing the battle for ourselves.”

They return to Nuremberg and find Nowak waiting at the third safehouse address, whereas the first two were occupied by people who were most decidedly not part of their ring of spies. “We have been keeping to this one to placate the Nazis, who’ve needed to find new living quarters for civilians after the bombing runs left them homeless,” Nowak explains. “Only one other safehouse in the city is still ours, and that one is to placate Grindelwald.”

“You didn’t move out of the city?” Henry asks.

Nowak shakes his head. “It would be dangerous for so many to leave at once. The Nazis sometimes feel that those who leave the city are running from the war. They shoot them as traitors, even if it is obvious they are killing families, not soldiers. We stay, but the magicians, they did good work. The cellar of each house has been…expanded.”

“Magical space?” Salazar asks, noting with amusement that Charles repeats, “Wizarding space!” under his breath.

“Yes. I do not much care what creates the extra space as long as we all have safe places to sleep at night,” Nowak says. “There have been no more bombs since we have built these bunkers, but Winter is certain they will hold.”

Salazar raises an eyebrow. “Is she?”

Nowak scowls at Salazar as he blushes. “How much did you wager on us?”

“Not nearly enough,” Salazar replies, smiling. “What else have we missed?”

Nowak’s expression sobers. “John Morgan. We still do not know what happened to cause his death, but an officer ordered him shot. That you bring two more with you increases our numbers after the loss of Alexis, Marie, and John.”

“Gods.” Salazar shifts the pack again. “Were we able to retrieve his body? John’s wife, Ella, will wish to bury him.” Whereas John’s mother-in-law, disowned Iola Black Hitchens, will wish to avenge him. That will have to be a conversation carefully navigated; two spouses from the Black family have now been lost in this war in Salazar’s group alone. He’d prefer not to be cursed within an inch of his life—especially when considering that John’s sister-in-law is an equally vengeful English Rothschild.

“No.” Nowak holds up a metal box with a lid, which might once have held flour in a kitchen. “This is the best Hopkirk could do. When they cleaned up the city after the bombing, the Nazis did not concern themselves with funerals. Too many dead. They burned the bodies, and John was one of them.”

“How many?” Charles asks, frowning. “If they’re resorting to pyres…”

“True pyres would show the dead more respect,” Nowak interrupts, but he sounds tired, not temperamental. “There were hundreds of bodies, Saul. It was worse than March.”

“You really are lucky to be alive,” Salazar murmurs at Henry, who has blanched white. The Nazis certainly don’t want their citizens to know how heavy their losses are, not when morale already rests on a knife’s edge. “Please remind me to take John’s ashes home to his wife the next time I cross the Channel. Ella deserves to be told in person by one who knew him.”

“I will,” Nowak agrees, relieved to know the task will be done properly. He and John had been friends.

Salazar puts aside his grief, as there is no time to dwell upon it. He’s now glad that Charles insisted upon joining Henry in Europe, else their numbers would be too few. “Is there any specific place we should dwell, David?”

Nowak shakes his head. “No. As long as you are seen entering the address the Nazis or these Wizarding Nazis believe to be yours, from there you can retreat to either. Aurelius, he complained the entire time that it would be easier to wait and then build a tunnel between the safehouses with your assistance, but between myself, Hopkirk, and Kaiser, we confirmed it was properly done.”

“All right, then. Let’s find a place to sleep that hasn’t been claimed, and then I will be introducing Henry to Grindelwald.”

Henry gets over his shock quickly, glaring at Salazar. “Ah, yes. Just what I was looking forward to.”

“Turncoat,” Charles teases his brother, grinning. He then holds his hand out to Nowak. “Saul tells me that you’re the man to speak to regarding demolitions, magical and non-magical. I don’t have much of an understanding of TNT, but if you want something destroyed, I can certainly make it happen.”

Nowak’s eyes light up with the glee of a fellow devotee to breaking things before he clasps Charles’s hand. “Yes, I am, and your presence is quite welcome. Come! We have a railway line over a river that needs to become a former railway line!”

Gellert Grindelwald is disconcertingly pleased to see Salazar again. “Saul, my friend! It is good that you have healed. There are rumors that our German brethren will soon find themselves quite busy fighting the Allies. I want nothing less than the best at my side as we wait to see who or what might accompany them!”

 _And so many would hear only the first words, not what came after,_ Salazar thinks. “I have brought the man who saved my life the day the bombs fell last week. Gellert, this is Herr Potter. Henry, Herr Grindelwald.”

“You always leave off my titles,” Grindelwald complains, but his icy eyes are already regarding Henry with interest. “Not just any English Potter, but the one who sits on the Wizengamot and espouses a specific sort of equality.”

“We’re all wizards and witches in the end, are we not?” Henry replies in German. “The Allies think they sent me to spy on their behalf, but I’ve long been curious about the man who escapes capture time and again, and whose greatest ideal seems to be his concern for the ‘Greater Good.’”

“I suppose if you would bother to save the life of one who is understood to be loyal to me…” Grindelwald gives a slow nod and then shakes Henry’s hand. “ _Grüß Gott, mein freund_. Inge and Anke are sisters and close associates of mine. They will introduce you to the others—yes, Saul, I pledge that none will hurt him. So long as he minds his manners,” Grindelwald adds, a sudden snapping of his words that belies the earlier smoothness.

“I was born with them, I assure you,” Henry responds dryly.

Grindelwald laughs, a sound that echoes in his castle. Salazar represses a shiver; this place always feels as cold as the foul bastard himself. “Saul, these bombings. I wonder if you might know of the means to strengthen the walls. I would hate for destabilization of the land to endanger us.”

“I can,” Salazar allows, but it is not Grindelwald and his foolish followers he will do so for. He will do it to protect those imprisoned within, the many they do not yet have the means to save. Grindelwald’s paranoia always extends to his _favored guests_. Even a single body missing from this castle will see him establishing a hunt that will not end until the escapee is found.

Henry and Salazar don’t speak again until sometime after midnight. Salazar casts the Invisibility Charm upon himself, adding silencing charms so his steps and breath go unheard in this echoing maze. The means to become truly invisible is a bit of magic others seem to have lost the knowledge of over the centuries, for reasons he has never quite been able to fathom.

Salazar pushes open the door to Henry’s room, not surprised when Henry wisely points his wand at the open and supposedly entry doorway. He shuts the door, wandlessly casts a privacy charm, and dares to speak. “It’s only me. Can I reveal myself without being hexed into next week?”

Henry snorts. “Who is the dark-skinned beauty in the painting within a house in the north Midlands?”

Salazar grins and dismisses the charms that hide him from view. “A beautiful lady named Isis. You’ll do an excellent job of performing your role as a double agent if you recall such precautions so easily.”

“I’m half-terrified out of my wits and paranoid beyond belief,” Henry retorts, blowing out a long breath. “I fear that will wear off, and I’ll give in to the lull of complacency.”

“Open your door and listen to the sounds of agony that drift up from below,” Salazar suggests, humor gone. “That has always served as an apt reminder.”

“There is nothing we can do for them, is there?”

“No. Not yet. It isn’t even safe to linger long in your company, even though I introduced you to Grindelwald as a friend,” Salazar says.

Henry frowns. “Then he is as paranoid as rumor says.”

“Yes, but he is intelligent in his paranoia. His instincts are excellent. If Grindelwald senses a lie, he will not stop hounding you until he uncovers the truth.” Salazar hesitates and glances off in the distance, but it isn’t pain he hears. Alarms? Air raid sirens? Definitely shouting, yes, but the words are indistinct—

Henry snaps his fingers in front of Salazar’s eyes. “That has been getting more prevalent even in the brief time I’ve known you. It’s dangerous, Saul.”

“I know.” Salazar scrubs at his eyes, then his forehead. “Such increasing moments of Divination often signal that an event of vast importance is coming.”

“The northern landings,” Henry says.

Salazar nods, but he isn’t certain. This feels closer than an event still nearly a full year distant.

He is suddenly very glad that he can use Desplazarse to escape even Grindelwald’s paranoid defences. “I worry about you more than myself, for obvious reasons. If Grindelwald discovers your duplicity—”

“Oh, that has already been taken care of. Grindelwald has a spy within the Ministry of Magic, and he works at Leonard’s side.”

Salazar stares at Henry. “I’ll kill him. I’m not yet decided on which one it will be, but one of them is going to bloody well die!”

“It’s awfully difficult to use a dead man to our advantage,” Henry reminds him. “Though, yes, I do agree that Leonard should have informed you during our meeting with the joint ministers. Leonard has been filling the spy’s ears full of his concern for my turncoat ways, how surprised he is by it, and how he simply _must_ keep it a secret from the Wizengamot, as Leonard’s position as Minister is tenuous due to the war and they simply can’t afford the crisis in faith and morale that such news would cause—why are you grinning at me like that?”

Salazar sketches a brief bow. “Because I was suddenly reminded quite strongly of my brother. Are all Gryffindor-bound Potters such closet Slytherins?”

Henry draws himself up with a mocking sniff. “I,” he declares, “am a politician.”

Salazar tilts his head. “And I say my question still stands.”

“Saul Luiz, please get the hell out of my dubious chambers.”

When he isn’t smiling at Grindelwald while resisting the urge to strangle the life out of him, Salazar is often cataloging new “work camp” sites with Maxime. It makes him glad that Marie is in London; Maxime may well have already lost everything, but Marie is far more temperamental about it. She wouldn’t have been able to stand for the expansion of Dachau, or the satellite camps that are cropping up all over bloody Bavaria.

Rowena would hate it; Marie and Rowena would be of similar mindsets. While Helga and Nizar were often each other’s terrible enablers for violence, Rowena was practical in her ruthlessness. She did not enable terrible habits so much as invoke the sort of wrath that left behind nothing but scorched earth.

“I want so badly to _do_ something,” Maxime murmurs, passing Salazar the binoculars she’s spelled so the glass won’t reflect light that would attract a sniper’s attention. “Winter is in position.”

Salazar nods and looks. Winter Sauer is leaning against the fence, far from the secured zones, with a young SS officer pressed up next to her. She smiles as she whispers into his ear, and the officer laughs. “I’m truly glad I was never so easily led about by my own prick.”

Maxime utters a ladylike snort. “Then you’re a rare man indeed, Saul.”

“Date night just ended early. Winter’s soldier boyfriend is being chewed out by a superior officer for abandoning his post.” Salazar bites back a smile. “Winter might be telling off the man for interrupting a good German girl’s rendezvous with her camp-stationed boyfriend.”

“Is he falling for it?” Maxime asks. “I’ve seen that one before—recognize him by the medals he insists on wearing even when it isn’t necessary.”

Salazar hands the binoculars back to her. “Winter is leaving and the idiots are smiling. I think it more likely they were told to be more subtle.” He waits as Maxime frowns, turning her head as she views every part of the camp they can see from this distance. “Any sign of your brother?”

Maxime sighs and puts the binoculars away, strapping the leather case shut to protect the glass. “No. Not the last two times we’ve been here.”

“They’ve been sending prisoners out to labor in other towns.” Another Allied group of spies managed to intercept a small labor group before they reached their destination, killing the guards and liberating fifteen prisoners. It’s not enough, but Dachau’s own citizens are hiding them. It’s the sort of reminder they all need, that not all of Germany wants what Hitler, the Nazis, and the fucking SS claim is best for their countrymen. “Manfri could be with one of those groups.”

“He could be,” Maxime admits, but doesn’t look convinced. Salazar would like to reassure her further, but he isn’t convinced, either. Entire families, entire _neighborhoods_ have been emptied of everyone the Nazis have deemed unfit. The western camps aren’t big enough to hold everyone who has vanished across all of occupied Europe.

“I want to do something, too,” Salazar says, and Maxime nods. They both know that they can’t, that the liberation of those fifteen prisoners was miraculous in that it didn’t cause the murder of other prisoners due to Nazi retaliation. Salazar thinks again of Rowena, whose own duchy is northeast of here, magically hidden from prying eyes.

The Duchess of Raven’s Claw would not spy. She would go to war, and she would not stop until every last Nazi was dead and every prisoner free. One thousand years ago, Salazar would be at her side. Now, he knows how vile men can truly be, and how petty. If word spread that a powerful military force was engaging the guards of the camps and freeing the prisoners, telephones and telegrams would send swift orders that ensured there would be no one left to save. Himmler’s _Einsatzgruppen_ have already demonstrated that truth often enough.

Returning from Dachau in the south means returning to Grindelwald in the north. Salazar might honestly prefer to go rolling about in a lava flow at this juncture, but still he goes. Henry and Aurelius are grateful to see them return, as it’s far more difficult to deal with Grindelwald alone.

Everyone in Nurmengard is required to attend to Grindelwald for a formal supper each night. Grindelwald, of course, wants to know where Salazar has been for the past few days, making it a subject of public discussion by doing so. Salazar, as always, wields the truth, telling Grindelwald (and everyone) that he visited Dachau to see why the Nazis felt such a need to open more and more of their “labor” camps.

It’s utterly chilling when Grindelwald laughs. “Oh, those are the tame ones. The camps in the east would be far more to Spain’s taste, I think!”

“Oh?” Salazar can’t move his arms without being noticed. He stomps on Aurelius’s toes when the man flinches. _Stop that,_ he orders silently with another, gentler press of his heel. “I’ve heard there are more camps in the east, but little else.”

“The Germans want these to be kept quiet. They are not labor camps, not unless one counts being worked to death. Of course, then it makes the slogan of the work camps true, does it not?” Grindelwald salutes the idea with a raised glance of champagne. “Franco might have chosen to disregard my overtures, but I can still admire his swift dispatch of his enemies. It’s high time the Muggles of my homeland came to their senses and emulated him.”

“You mean the camps are not camps at all.” How Henry keeps his voice so mild in that moment, Salazar will never know. He’s now sitting on his own hands to keep from killing their host.

“Oh, they still bear the name, but I’ve heard them referred to as the ‘final solution.’ Execution camps, my friends.” Grindelwald chuckles again, delighted by the idea. “The Nazis are doing an excellent job of purging Muggles from Europe without my needing to lift a finger. It will be so much easier to conquer and control them once they’ve finished with their inspired _solution._ ”

“And you do not mind that wizards and witches of great talent may be dying in these camps?” Aurelius asks in a cool voice. He is one of the few capable of flirting with disrespect in regards to Grindelwald without risking punishment. “They could be of value to our cause.”

Grindelwald waves a dismissive hand. “They were given the chance to join me. I would have sheltered them in Nurmengard gladly! Alas, they’ve chosen another fate.”

Henry comes to Salazar in his granted quarters that night, closing the door behind him. It is long minutes before he removes the Cloak that hides him from others. “You didn’t challenge the entry of another into your room, Saul.”

“I knew it was you.” Salazar keeps his breathing steady, but doesn’t lift his head from where he is seated, elbows on his knees, the palms of his hands dug into his eyes. “None know of the Invisibility Charm but those who spy within this castle, and you were not using the charm.”

“I see.” Henry doesn’t ask why Salazar is so certain. In the four months he’s spent in Germany, enduring Grindelwald’s company, he asks fewer questions, seeking answers with his eyes and his ears. He’s learned, as they all have, to prioritize the information they spy for above almost everything else. “Are you all right?”

“Not really, but I thought it to be obvious.”

Henry walks over and sits down beside Salazar, the gossamer folds of his family’s Cloak balled up in his hands. “If we were not so drastically outnumbered, I would suggest assassinating him tonight.”

“I don’t know if I have it within me to be that subtle about killing the fucking bastard, Henry.” Salazar lifts his head only to let it fall back and rest on the stone wall behind him. “Extermination camps.”

“I know.” Henry sighs. “We need to get you out of here long enough to report back to England.”

“Would it do any good?”

“I don’t know,” Henry replies. “At least the Allies would know how costly any further delays would truly be.”

“I’m not certain they would believe it, Henry. I’ve been here since 1939, and I’m struggling to believe it!”

Henry pats his arm. “I hesitate to say it, but surely you’ve seen people commit atrocities against each other before.”

“Of course I have.” Salazar swallows back bile. “But this isn’t a single village turning on its own out of fear, or discovering the results of too many innocent victims slaughtered during a single battle. I’ve seen communities turn on each other, neighbors killing neighbors, frightened and angry people scapegoating the most convenient, most hated targets among them…but not like this. This is an entire continent, Henry.

“I’ve never lived through anything like this.”

7th June, 1944

Nuremberg, Germany

They’re too far away to listen through the non-magical wireless, not unless they wish to hear the details in heavily censored German. Instead, Lewis switches over to the Wizarding Wireless and picks up a signal out of London, which is reporting on what is being called Operation Overlord.

“What a name for an invasion,” Elsa comments, taking Lewis’s arm as he returns to her side. That is a pairing Salazar didn’t expect, especially given the age difference between them, but there is much truth to Shakespeare’s words: _misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows._

“We have our update now. Wizards and witches of Britain, I am proud to say that the Commonwealth Muggle soldiers and our American allies have landed at Normandy, and the beaches are ours. We will not have more details until tomorrow—”

Maxime turns off the wireless. “That’s because the invasion occurred yesterday, and you’re only reporting on it now.”

“Not much point to it if he off and tells the Nazis what we’re up to, is there?” Lewis observes.

Maxime sighs. “I know. I don’t like this delay in communication that lies between us and our allies on the coast.”

Salazar doesn’t need to volunteer to jump back and forth between one of the new safehouses well outside Nuremberg and the Norman coastline. The others simply expect it, as he has done so for them from the very beginning, when codes were secrets waiting to be cracked and birds were targets to be shot down. Both are still true; both also try Salazar’s patience.

It isn’t until late July that the coastal Allies begin to make progress…but once they do, it is much like the 20th century’s progression of technology. They become a force that advances with greater and greater speed. Paris is liberated on 25th August that year. Salazar makes his escape from Grindelwald’s fortress by promising to seek out Grindelwald’s French allies, though Grindelwald is still confident enough never to ask what Salazar might seek them out _for_. He takes a certain cold pleasure in eliminating each and every one of them, returning to Nurmengard with the “sad news” that the Wizarding branch of the Allied forces discovered Grindelwald’s hidden followers and defeated them all in a brief, decisive battle.

Then Salazar goes to Marie, informing her of Paris’s liberation before the news can reach London. She bursts into joyful tears, hugs him, kisses both of his cheeks, and then Disapparates in order to inform their wartime ministers.

Gellert Grindelwald might hold the charisma to sway fools to his cause. He might have a firm grasp of tactics and logic. He even has the fucking Elder Wand, which Salazar _never_ wanted to see again in this life, much less find it held by a genocidal, bigoted, magical Nazi, but Grindelwald’s arrogance blinds him to words he might otherwise pay closer attention to. Salazar has never told Grindelwald anything less than the absolute truth, and Aurelius’s eyes shine with grim delight each time Salazar uses Grindelwald’s blind spot against him.

Even when Germany pushes back, even when the military advances seem to slow, it feels as if almost no time has passed before Allied forces are holding the line to the west of Germany, staring over the banks of the Rur. A similar standoff is occurring in Italy. Allied forces are glaring across the Apennines at the last major German defensive line in the south. While Salazar and his watchful allies were keeping an eye to their Commonwealth brethren, the Soviets took advantage of Germany’s distraction to plow through the eastern defences. They find out only after Paris’s liberation that Soviet soldiers are occupying—and then controlling—most of what had been Poland before Nazi efforts split it into pieces.

“Dammit,” Henry mutters of Poland’s loss. “We were gaining some of our best intelligence from the Polish network.”

Salazar nods, similarly frustrated. The network might survive, but it will be a long time until they know if the intelligence is still truth, or if it is Soviet-controlled and contrived falsehood. The Soviets are their allies in the war against Nazi Germany, yes, but none of his spies have forgotten how Stalin “assisted” China.

“We’re winning, though,” Jack of Trades comments, rolling up maps on the latest intelligence on military outposts of both types surrounding Nuremberg. Each one goes into a case spelled to be unnoticeable by any except the bearer until they pass it along to the next spy in their linked chains. Jack is a recent English acquisition whose real name is Jack Trader, but the nickname was sung about by Lewis, and thus it stuck. “Holy shit, is all I have to say.”

“No,” Henry says in quiet correction. “As far as the tactics of this second World War are concerned, we’ve already won. The Nazis don’t have enough of their war machine left to fight us off on three sides. The only thing left is to watch the death toll grow when Germany refuses to concede and surrender.”

“I’ll not be saying we’ve won until all the guns are on the ground and the bombings have stopped,” Salazar counters. The Soviets have made the most progress now in the war effort, but even they haven’t broken through the Eastern front of Germany itself. The Germans are fighting the Allies on the Western front in the Ardennes, which none of them think will go well.

Their ploy of acting as Wizarding Nazis is maintained until the very last moment in December, when Salazar’s identity is discovered. It isn’t his fault, nor is it the fault of any of his fellow spies, but the timing is frustrating.

Salazar is leaning against the wall when he’s confronted, trying to remain unobtrusive during one of Grindelwald’s social gatherings. Grindelwald is wise enough not to force attendance, but he does not need to. These idiots will quite literally crawl over each other in a bid to win Grindelwald’s favor, which then grants them power. They’re too short-sighted to realize that the power they gain never lasts.

He sips at a bit of wine, ignoring the potions that’ve been mixed in. He has to admit, whoever Grindelwald found to tamper with the wine did an excellent job at choosing both the type of grape, its age, and the dosages. There is just enough Calming Draught to induce a light, pleasant state of mind that he destroys with Mind Magic, and just enough Veritaserum to be _highly_ annoying. It makes Salazar glad that he taught all of his allies to spy using truths rather than fictions.

It also makes him wonder why Grindelwald didn’t ask Salazar to perform this bit of deception. He learns why soon enough.

Grindelwald approaches Salazar, trailed by Inge and Anke, Ernst and Lothar, and three of the American allies he has been courting for twenty years. There is a closed folder clasped in his hands.

Salazar has survived long centuries with only a few injuries that might have killed a mortal man because he trusts his instincts, and because he isn’t a sodding blind idiot. Grindelwald only brings this many of his followers along when he intends a confrontation.

 _And so it begins,_ Salazar thinks, but gives Grindelwald the expected smile of greeting. “I didn’t realize you were intent upon socializing this evening.”

“I was not, but then things changed.” Grindelwald holds out the folder, an innocuous expression on his face that doesn’t quite cover intermixed anger and glee. “Please, have a look.”

Salazar puts aside his glass and quietly spells a concentrated shielding charm over his hands, just in case the folder has been treated to contact poisons. Grindelwald’s personal escort all have their wands out, twirling them or idling looking down their lengths as they wait.

When Salazar opens the folder, he finds his own face staring back at him in a black-and-white, non-magical photograph, accompanied by documents that bear the marks of being run through a loose-leaf copier. A mole has definitely crawled their way into the SIS and found their way into Section D—specifically, the part of Section D that involves British Muggle-Wizarding cooperation for the war effort. It isn’t his entire file, thank the gods, as his English properties aren’t listed, but what it does include is enough to damn him in Grindelwald’s eyes.

It’s just as well. Salazar was beginning to dread waking in the morning, and that is when he can find sleep at all. It will be a relief not to cater to Gellert Grindelwald’s whims any longer.

“That isn’t a very good photograph,” Salazar comments, shutting the folder but not returning it. There is no sense letting Grindelwald keep it, even if magical copies have already been made. Grindelwald keeps his information to himself; if chaos ensues, this could easily end up in the hands of another Wizarding Nazi idiot.

Grindelwald shakes his head and then clucks his tongue at Salazar, as if he were a misbehaving chick. “Saul. Saul Luiz. I am so very disappointed in you. Spying? Upon me? What did they promise you to become a traitor to our ways? We were going to change the world, you and I.”

Salazar breathes in and out, checking the state of the anti-Apparition wards that are woven through the very stones of Nurmengard. “I’ve never changed my spots, Gellert. You just didn’t notice.”

The expression of expanding fury is a joy to behold, but Salazar doesn’t wait to see more. He Apparates to Henry’s side, who grabs hold of Salazar’s coat sleeve. Henry was close enough by way of the social nonsense to know and understand what happened, and their priority is now simple: escape. Aurelius and Winter have no idea anything has gone wrong, but they’ve long been trained for this potential. They grasp onto Salazar’s coat without a single word needed.

It’s a fight to get through the anti-Apparition wards in the walls while carrying passengers. The wards that surround Nurmengard give him a second battle before they’re all safely away, landing in a heap in the cellar of the closest safehouse. If Salazar did not have the earth to assist him, he wouldn’t have succeeded.

As it is, Salazar collapses to the ground, exhausted. “Send! Send!” He rests his face in the dirt, gasping for breath, and listens as three Patroni are cast and sent to the others. The code phrase is simple: “Formation broken.”

Salazar catches sight of a bit of white and idly notes that Henry’s Patronus is a great northern stag. He’d very much like to find out why that particular Patronus follows his little brother’s bloodline.

Aurelius picks Salazar up from the ground. “This time, we are doing the work,” he says. “Winter has Henry. There is a house nearby under the Loyalty Charm, one that is known by no Nazi of any sort. Bring on the war, for it is at our doorstep.”

Salazar shakes his head to clear it as the coded phrase brings knowledge back to his head. “Understood,” he rasps, and then they’re Apparating again. The house is quite large, two storeys built above ground to grant them three levels of space for all the spies who live and work around Nuremberg. A magician built it, so instead of a separate structure, the house is physically fused to the rocky hill and partially sheltered by a reinforced overhang of dirt and stone. The cellar is reinforced rock, a place for supplies and a means of escaping bombs if they drop over the hillside.

He awakens in a chair inside the house, but knows he hasn’t been asleep for long. The others are still arriving from the other safehouses, bearing belongings and supplies. There is a great deal of talk on how much Grindelwald might compromise their operations against the Nazis with this unwanted event, along with discussions of it being possible for any other magician to be capable of earning their way into Nurmengard to continue spying.

Salazar pushes himself to his feet and finds the folder on the sitting room’s coffee table. He picks it up, lurches a bit as he attempts to walk, and then shakes off the rest of his fatigue. “I have to go,” he tells Issam, who has the misfortunate of being the closest person to Salazar when he decides upon insanity.

“Saul, you look like death,” Issam responds bluntly. “Can it not wait for a day?”

“No.” Salazar holds up the file. “MI6 has to know that there is a spy in their ranks. Ours is not the only group that could be compromised. If I’m not back until tomorrow, it’s because I debriefed London and fell on my face.”

Issam grins and clasps Salazar’s shoulder. “I’ll let the others know. Be careful.”

“And you,” Salazar replies, and immediately Apparates. He doesn’t go to the northern coast, but again retreats to Gipuzkoa’s cliffs overlooking the ocean. “Oh, fuck,” he gasps, and then drops down to sit on his arse.

That was so close. If there had been others inside Grindelwald’s fortress aside from Aurelius, Winter, and Henry, he wouldn’t have been able to breach so many anti-Apparition wards. He would have failed, and they would be prisoners.

Grindelwald is not kind to his prisoners, even if he does not kill them. He wants their company too much.

Salazar lifts his face to the cool breeze coming from the south, not strong enough to hide the scent of salt in the air. Five minutes more, perhaps. Then he thinks he can cope with bureaucracy.

The elf Rissa Apparates out to join him. “You do not look well,” she observes in French, peering at Salazar in concern. She is frailer than last he saw her, but still filled with an elf’s vitality.

Salazar smiles. “I’m not feeling well, either, but I have to go to London as soon as I can gather my wits.”

“And you wisely came home.” Rissa gives him a pleased look before sitting next to him. “Let me tell you of how the lands and keep fare while you regain your strength.”

“I would consider it a great kindness.” Salazar listens to Rissa’s precise, lilting recitation of how the keep’s structure has needed a few repairs, of the wintering gardens, and two new elf births among the clan. Salazar had previously offered them more space within his family’s home, but the elves declined and built an underground extension that leads to their own. The new domain is a copse of trees atop a hillside which never had trees before, hidden from the eyes of all but Salazar and his family.

One of Rissa’s sons, Pierre, learned Parseltongue in order to communicate with the basilisks during their visits to the caverns below the keep. The basilisk reports from Burgos were startling. For a brief time, Spain helped Jewish groups to escape France and Germany. That apparent generosity ended last year, but the scales remain unbalanced in light of how many of Spain’s own people were murdered by an utter _bastardo_ in the name of politics.

Salazar might also hate Franco for what he has done to Gipuzkoa and Biscay, and to the _Euskaldunak_. He ordered their language erased, their tongues stilled, their names changed. Salazar does not want to be the only speaker of Euskara left in the world, not when his father’s language is older than the first hesitant stumblings of words emerging from the Myceneaen tribes.

When Salazar arrives in London, he cheerfully goes through all of the security checkpoints within the Ministry of Magic. He’s allowed into the Minister’s office on the current strength of his name, and proceeds to terrify the name of the mole out of Leonard Spencer-Moon’s Senior Undersecretary while Leonard keeps his back firmly pressed to the corner wall.

“GRETA!” Ursinus Burke finally wails, dripping snot and other unpleasant liquids. Salazar is almost disappointed by how easy he capitulates. “GRETA MEYER!”

“And the name she is currently using within the SIS?” Salazar asks. Leonard starts swearing under his breath as he finally recognizes what must have occurred. It certainly took him long enough.

“E-E-Elizabeth! Elizabeth Mortimer!”

Salazar drops Burke on the floor. “Your family would be ashamed of you.” He hopes they would; the Burkes of the previous century certainly would have found Ursinus’s actions appalling. They were Slytherin enough to understand that turning traitor to gain power is too much risk. There are plenty of other underhanded means to rise in the Ministry’s ranks.

“A Nazi spy would dare use the name of one of Wizarding Britain’s most prominent Jewish families?” Leonard shakes his head in disgust before he calls for the Aurors that guard his office. Salazar recognizes Lucretia Black by the recent minor scandals she caused, first by joining the Aurors upon graduation from Hogwarts, and then by marrying Ignatius Prewett, the white sheep of that particular branch of the Prewett family. Her partner and mentor today is Rufus Scrimgeour, who oft looks as if he attempted to Transfigure his head into an African lion but never quite succeeded.

“Finally!” Scrimgeour barks as he spies Burke lying on the floor. “I’ve been wanting to do that for months!”

“What prompted this outing of our spy?” Prewett asks in a much calmer voice.

Salazar hands Leonard the folder Grindelwald gave to him. “That.”

The Minister for Magic goes ashen as he flips open the folder and spies its contents. “I see. Are you off to their offices, Saul?”

“As soon as I’ve witnessed these two take Burke into custody.”

Leonard closes the folder. “Rufus, Lucretia, please remove this man on my authority. Don’t kill him, even under wartime privileges, as we may need his testimony for other crimes, but feel free to fully interrogate him. I think the time has come to weed out the other spies from our midst.”

Scrimgeour grins as he lifts Burke to his feet, allowing Prewett to restrain him. “We’ll be having quite the time, then. Saul Luiz, I’ll be seeing you down there next year when we’ve retaken the Continent. I’m not much for spying, but I won’t be sitting out the rest of the war!”

“I’m certain the Germans will regret it,” Salazar replies, thinking that others might, as well. Rufus Scrimgeour is a decent man, but he doesn’t understand the meaning of the word subtle…or of empathy, for that matter.

Leonard retrieves his hat and coat. “We should fetch Winston. This is his purview. He’ll need to know. Take us to Ten Downing Street, please.”

Salazar Apparates them to the Disillusioned point not far from 10 Downing. “If the Ministries are going to continue to cooperate, you need a more secure means of communication than this.”

“We’re working on it,” Leonard replies. “Good afternoon, Adam, Eric.”

Adam pulls a face at Leonard’s appearance, though he seems appeased by Salazar. He resists the urge to roll his eyes; Leonard has no sense of color coordination, but his clothing is otherwise fine. Eric is the one to nod at Leonard and pull open the door. “Minister, good to see you again. The Prime Minister is in his office. Saul, don’t break anything this time.”

“I always repair what he breaks,” Saul retorts, stepping inside.

“Obvious which one is the Muggle and which one is the Half-blood, isn’t it?” Leonard asks.

Salazar nods. “More and more so every day,” he says, but he’s thinking on the growing rift between Pure-bloods, Half-bloods, and the dubbed Muggle-borns. Grindelwald strengthened the old blood bigotries, and this war is refining it, helping it to gain new traction. Tom Marvolo Riddle will soon be taking advantage of the tensions awaiting him after his graduation from Hogwarts. “Has the Prime Minister ever Apparated before?”

“If Winston hasn’t, he is about to learn.”

Watching Winston tear hell through the officers in charge of vetting new members of the SIS and Section D is an entertaining way to spend an afternoon. Once Menzies comes along and hears why the Prime Minister is on a rampage, he joins in the fun. Salazar leans back against a damp wall of the Underground, staying out of their way. There will certainly be another debrief after this, if only so he can reassure three stressed officials that at least one of their spying cells is intact.

“How the hell did this _happen?_ ” Winston is still yelling three hours later, slamming his fist down on Menzies’s desk.

“Winston, I don’t bloody know,” Menzies replies, scowling. “Just getting into the room housing the records for Wizarding Britain’s service members requires special permission, not to mention my own damned key!”

“Then they have a copy of the key,” Winston grumbles, sinking into a chair while clutching his cane. “What a mess.”

“The locks are being changed as we speak,” Menzies says in reassurance. “I daresay if this young lady had turned out to be a witch, she wouldn’t have needed a key in the first place—and there! That, right there, is the question! Why would Miss Meyer assist a Wizarding Nazi?”

“She must have been groomed for it. She hasn’t been cursed and convinced to do so by magical means,” Salazar says. “How bad is the damage?”

“We don’t know.” Menzies sighs. “We’ll have to wait for each group with representatives from Wizarding Britain to report in, and that is at least a day’s delay, if not longer. Fortunately, your other identity is intact.”

“I did notice there wasn’t a mention of Fernan Suero in that folder,” Salazar replies. “Separate files?”

Menzies inclines his head. “Leonard, Winston, and I discussed it, and it seemed wisest to keep two separate dossiers on each agent working for us through Wizarding Britain. If we ever need to call on them to work in completely mundane circumstances, there will be no mention of the Ministry of Magic for another agent to find. Miss Meyer concentrated only on the magical files.”

“We can’t just rely on individuals reporting in,” Leonard says. “The documents themselves should be checked.”

Winston gives his fellow Minister an appreciative look. “The letter copier leaves imprints on the original. Good thinking, Leonard.”

“I’ll make certain all of mine are still who they say they are,” Salazar offers, standing up to leave.

“How close was it?” Winston gives him a hard stare that makes Salazar hear the whispering in the back of his mind, the terrified screaming of horses forcibly engaged in war. “To us losing our Grindelwald watchers?”

Salazar doesn’t see any reason to imply otherwise. “Close. It was _very_ close.”

“Will he run?” Leonard asks. “Will Grindelwald run? That’s always been his modus operandi before.”

“That was before Nazi Germany built up a powerbase that Grindelwald could cocoon himself in.” Salazar glances at the other three, all who’ve remained seated. It is, he realizes, a subconscious signal of respect among men who were taught by their families and their schooling that every single gesture has power and meaning. “Grindelwald is intelligent enough to realize that Germany cannot hold everything it has claimed, but he doesn’t believe they will fail to defend their original borders. The Allies will be knocking upon Nurmengard’s front door before Grindelwald realizes he was wrong, and by then, he won’t be able to run. His own paranoia has ensured it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of concentration camps and execution camps and basically everything that was fucking horrible about Nazi Germany. Grindelwald is very much himself, which is just as bad.


	5. Forfeitures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ll need a trump card if you want to stop Grindelwald.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd and flailed at by @norcumii <3
> 
> Yeah, I'm trying to make up for yesterday's chapter. This one starts out high on The Bun Scale, but the chapter also ends both wars. Yep, really. Finito, done, finished.
> 
> Warnings at the end!

It’s 2nd January of the new year before Salazar can escape London. He has to deal with the SIS, and then the bloody Ministry of Magic. The latter is its own special frustration, as he doesn’t even _work_ for those people! Then there is a British Prime Minister who wants Salazar to get absolutely pissed with him for the holidays before Churchill is off home to get pissed again with family.

Salazar checks on the Willow House, updating Dorea on her husband’s madness—dear gods, it’s _genetic_ —and assures dear Alexis that her brother is fine. Before departing again, he finds Dorea exchanging bemused looks with Nizar’s portrait. “What’s this about, then?”

“Oh, I found myself caught on the fact that your brother easily recognized me as a Black,” Dorea says in a thoughtful voice. “The idea just would _not_ let me be until I realized it was because I find him familiar, as well. I told myself it was because he so resembles you, but that’s not it. I swear I’ve seen this particular face somewhere before.”

Salazar tries not to let that concern him, though Dorea should have no uncertainty regarding what should have been a central piece in her Common Room. Like every Black known to Salazar except for the man who will one day be his little brother’s godfather, Dorea is a Slytherin. “There may still be portraits within Hogwarts. Ones who are of my family, from long ago, before the option to school at Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, or the Irish Academy was a possibility.”

“Oh, I never paid much attention to any of the portraits,” Dorea says at once, shaking her head. “Have you ever been inside the Black Family townhouse in London, Saul?”

“I’ve not had the pleasure, no.”

“It’s not a pleasure.” Dorea’s smile is a bit thinner and unhappier than is her wont. “The portraits in the house, they are…unwelcoming, at best. I learned from an early age to simply avoid them, and the habit carried over to Hogwarts. Given Slytherin House’s reputation, it seemed wiser to avoid any portraits in the dungeons. I didn’t want to hear yet more shouted vileness.”

That would certainly explain why his brother’s visage was only of vague familiarity rather than something Dorea should be quite familiar with. “I’m quite sorry to hear that.”

“Charles dotes on me and allows me to keep our home free of magical portraits, so all is well. Nizar and Isis aren’t bothersome in the slightest, though; perhaps I’ll entertain the idea of magical portraits in the house once more—as long as they’re nothing like the ones in the family townhouse,” Dorea adds, shuddering.

Before leaving England, Salazar visits Marie, who insists he take another large sack of pilfered black-market goods back with him after hearing of the food shortages. “Trust me, it will get worse before anything gets better,” Marie says, and Salazar nods in agreement. Fields cross Europe are barren of crops or lie fallow from the damages of war. Imported items are getting harder to find, and all the more expensive for it. They’ve a garden hidden next to the safehouse, but even an Earth-Speaker can only do so much to encourage plants to grow. It’s his herbology knowledge and their mixed means of creating fertilizer that grants them any sort of harvest at all.

Salazar returns to the Nurmengard safehouse just in time for an Allied bombing raid to begin. From the sound of it, they’re in for a terrible night, but Salazar isn’t concerned for his hearing. He’s worried about those who live in the city itself.

He enters the safehouse to find that it offers no respite from the racket. The others are shouting, their raised voices reminding Salazar far too much of the air raid sirens. “QUIET!” he roars, and is relieved by the silence until he sees the pinched, worried looks on too many faces. “How many of ours are still in the city?”

“Aurelius is safe in Nurmengard. Charles, Jack, and Lewis are in Reims, as scheduled,” Issam says. “But—”

“Nowak, Henry, and Winter are missing. Hornkoff, also. Winter and Henry aren’t responding to Patronus-sent messages,” Annette breaks in, her words fast and clipped. “Hornkoff was finishing his tailoring work for the evening. The others were to meet Nazi officers at the theatre. The old city, Saul.”

Salazar saw the fires lighting up the darkness. The bombs are still falling. “ _¡Mierda!_ ” He drops the sack, pulls his wand, and marches right back out the door.

“WAIT!” Maxime grabs him by the shoulder before he can Apparate. “You insane fool. Plan! You’d be the first to tell us: we need a plan!”

Salazar stares at her, and then at the others crowding the doorway. It takes more effort than he’d ever thought to need not to hare off into the city. “Right. You’re right. Thank you.”

Maxime nods. “Plan. Now.”

Salazar closes his eyes briefly. “Much as I do _not_ want to remain here…the bombs are still falling. I will not endanger the rest of you if you are so foolish as to follow me into a bloody inferno.” He lifts his chin and opens his eyes. “We’ll wait. The moment we’re certain the raid is over, we go. Four of us are missing. Four pairs. Richter, you’re with me. You’re more familiar with the old city, and I want you to show me the fastest way to that theatre once we’re on the ground.” Richter nods. “Annette, Kaiser. You’re looking for Hornkoff. Try the shop first. If you don’t find him there, or can’t get to it, try his flat. It’s only a few blocks distant. Issam and Elsa, Hopkirk and Maxime. You’re in reserve. Search the surviving crowds that will be gathering. If we find one but not the others, we’ll send word. If your partner has no magic, do it for them. Bubblehead Charms, fire-proofing spells, shielding charms. Take no chances.”

The waiting grates on Salazar’s nerves. Not that he has many of those left, but he’d like for what remains to hold out until the war ends. The moment that the impacts cease, Salazar grabs Richter’s outstretched hand, and they go.

“ _Mein Gott_ ,” Richter whispers when Salazar Apparates them to the edge of the old city. Salazar winces at the piercing wail of the air raid sirens, still blaring their warnings into the night, but it’s far too late. Most of the old city, the original buildings that found their roots when Salazar was still a young man in Burgos, is gone. Everything is either pummeled rubble, craters in the ground, or on fire.

“Ready?” Salazar asks, because he has not yet given up, and he will not. Not until he is pulling bodies from the wreckage.

“ _Ja._ ” Richter waits for the magic to be cast, but his face twitches in response to the charm that will keep the smoke from killing him. “I hope the others had time to do the same.”

“So do I,” Salazar replies, trying not to think of Hornkoff. He was alone; he isn’t a magician.

The heat is blistering, even through shielding charms and fireproofing magics. It feels like breathing in the fire of a smith’s forge, but Richter refuses to go back, and Salazar will only go forward. They call for Henry, Winter, Nowak, and even Hornkoff. There are almost no landmarks, not with everything still burning.

“How much ordinance did they drop?” Richter asks in shock. “This is madness, Saul.”

“I don’t know. Too much.” Salazar casts yet another diagnostic charm and turns away from the bodies he sees under the rubble. The living come first.

They don’t find anyone alive until dawn, when other survivors begin to creep out from the air raid shelters that didn’t collapse during the night. Richter shouts in wordless exclamation, pointing east. Salazar turns in that direction, wand ready, and then lets out a sigh of relief. “Henry.”

Henry is carrying a child with a bloodied leg, but otherwise the girl seems to be all right. Her rescuer has a blackened scorch mark on the side of his face; his dark hair is nearly white with dust and ash. His suit has certainly seen better days. Behind him are three individuals, a man, a young boy, and a woman, who is nearly walking on Henry’s heels in her effort to maintain her hold on the girl’s hand.

“I’m very glad to see you both,” Henry says. By the hoarseness of his voice, he didn’t quite manage a Bubblehead Charm in time to keep from breathing in noxious smoke, but he’s on his feet and alive.

“Where are Winter and Nowak?” Richter asks while Henry passes the girl along to her insistent mother. Another woman comes shrieking out of the wide-eyed, grey dust-cloaked survivors to attach herself to both child and mother, crying out words of relief to find the rest of her family alive. “They were with you!”

Henry shakes his head, dabbing at the burn on his face with a dirty handkerchief. “No, not when the sirens went off. The meeting at the theatre did not go well. Nowak and Winter went north afterwards. I went south. I was on the verge of Apparating back to the safehouse when one of the first explosions toppled me over. I landed wrong and hit my head. That family there, they were on their way into their own shelter. They were kind enough to pull me inside to join them. When I woke up, I kept the walls from crushing us all when their building was struck. It hasn’t been a good night for anyone.”

“Except for those in the planes,” Richter says bitterly.

“Do you think they’re…” Henry trails off, not wanting to voice the words. He is a man of two wars, but neither took away his concern for the cares of others.

“Not until we find bodies. That is always the rule,” Richter replies.

“What shall we do in the meantime?” Henry asks. “I assume we help with the cleanup, as we’ve done in the past, but…but this is massive. I scarcely know where to begin.”

“The living come first. Fuck the Statute of Secrecy. Germany doesn’t have a Ministry at the moment, anyway. Are you well enough to assist us?” After Henry nods in assent, Salazar grips Richter’s arm. “Regroup with the others searching among the survivors. Find your family.”

“Thank you.” Richter clasps Salazar’s hands in thanks and then darts off, disappearing into the haze of smoke covering the ground. Fires are still burning, flames licking along great massive piles of crumbling stone that used to be buildings.

“At least there are no trenches,” Henry mutters.

Salazar grimaces. Some of the smoke on the ground has a yellowed tint from burning paints and chemicals. He cannot afford that sort of flashback right now. “I truly think this might be worse.”

Issam and Elsa find evidence of Hornkoff’s death. Elsa later confides that between the fires and the collapsing buildings, it was too dangerous to attempt retrieval of their favorite tailor’s remains. Aurelius, back from Reims with Jack and Lewis, volunteers to find Hornkoff’s family. They dwell on the far side of Nuremberg in newer buildings; they’re likely still alive.

Hopkirk finds Nowak and Winter while Maxime is using up their supply of bandages to wrap the wounds of the injured. All Hopkirk will say afterwards is that the two were together, but the blank despair in his eyes tells the others all that is needed. They know the risks of the life and task they’ve chosen. To die in the company of a loved one is much preferable than dying alone.

“Over one thousand dead, and most of a city destroyed. For what?” Salazar asks, feeling ill as he watches the bodies pile up. “No military targets were destroyed. These are civilians.”

“They’re…well, they’re Nazis, Saul,” Lewis ventures. “It’s war, and they chose their side.”

Salazar rounds on him, vaguely aware that green flame is appearing around his hands and arms as his anger takes form. “That child, right there!” He points at a small boy who so unfairly looks as if he’s only sleeping. “DID HE CHOOSE A SIDE?”

Lewis backs up a step, eyes wide in alarm. “N-no. No. I suppose he didn’t.”

“War is always about sides!” Salazar shouts. “But you stay true to the fight, you bear your wand and your weapons against the soldiers the enemy sends against you! You do not _slaughter!_ ”

“Saul.” Henry takes his hand, ignoring the green flame of Salazar’s magic. “Come. Come along. Leave him be. Lewis is just trying to cope with this madness, same as the rest of us.”

Salazar has no idea where Henry leads him; he is blinded by rage, sick with guilt and grief. Marie still has the right of it: this war must be won, but Salazar has lived long enough to know that wars can be ended without this much death. Hatred is what drives slaughter. People who have become not living beings, but targets. Enemy. Other.

“Did we Apparate?” Salazar asks when he realizes they’re within the confines of the hillside safehouse once more.

Henry shakes his head. “No, Saul. You didn’t really…well, at least you’re no longer terrifying the locals.”

Salazar looks down at his hands, which are free of flame. “My—my apologies. I lost my temper.”

“It was actually wondrous to behold, though Annette and I worried you were going to burn poor Lewis out of existence.” Henry presses a glass into Salazar’s hand, filled with vodka attained by the Soviet’s new presence in the local black market. “Drink it. I think we both need it.”

The vodka burns going down. “Gods, that’s cheap,” Salazar coughs out, trying to clear his throat. He’s slowly realizing that his hands are blackened and filthy, that his shirt is no longer white, but wholly grey from digging through debris. His trousers are torn at the knees, his boots scuffed and ripped. Henry didn’t fare much better. The only clean skin on his face is below his eyes.

“I was twelve when I first saw war.” Salazar coughs again, surprised by his own unplanned words. “It was terrible, the spilling of blood, death—but we were soldiers fighting other soldiers. We weren’t slaughtering each other’s people. They might’ve wanted our land just as much as we wanted ours back from them, but land means nothing if the people are gone.”

Henry sits down beside him, letting out a deep sigh. “The trenches of the last war were awful. I still dream of them. The mud, the water, the stench. I still dream of being terrified of going over the wall, and I had magic to shield me from German bullets. Too many of the friends I made did not, and I couldn’t shelter them all. Still, we were soldiers fighting against other soldiers. Perhaps we’re both too old for this sort of war.”

Salazar rubs his finger along his glass, studying the smear of filth he leaves behind. “You are never too old to stand up and say that others have a right to exist.” The leveling of old Nuremberg makes Salazar wonder if the Allies are doing the same, all unknowing, to the camps. If they only see uniforms and military targets, and not all of the innocents trapped within.

Gods, he hopes not. The fucking SS don’t need the help.

Henry pours them each another round of terrible vodka. “Then may this war finish what the Hague Convention started. May humanity recognize all of these wrongs on both sides, and declare that they should never happen again.”

Salazar nods and taps Henry’s glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

In February, Kaiser is the one who screams up at the sky, shaking her fist. “COULD YOU NOT DO A BETTER JOB OF ENTIRELY MISSING THE MILITARY TARGETS?”

Salazar bitterly agrees with her, but this time manages to hold onto his temper. This was a raid conducted during the day. The weather was fair. There was no excuse for them to miss so badly, and now another thousand civilians are dead for it—probably far more than that, but grudging estimates are all they have. They do what they’ve done from the start, helping those who need it while listening to the words that float through the air from angry Nazi soldiers who forget—or do not care—that spies can be anywhere.

The Allies continue to advance on all fronts, surrounding Germany, but the bombs still fall. March sees the city burying or burning more civilian dead. Only in April do the bastards flying overhead get it right, but by then the city itself is under siege. Nuremberg is screaming from top to bottom, the earth a blaze of injured rage beneath his feet.

“Do you think it’s a coincidence that the Allies are finally hitting what they’re supposed to be aiming for now that there are Allied soldiers in the area?” Charles asks.

Salazar snorts his opinion of that. “No.” He has perspective enough to understand the rage from the pilots in the RAF, those who’ve lost families or suffered under threat of the Blitz. He is not so forgiving of the USAAF, whose anger should properly be directed at Japan.

Perhaps he is not too old for this sort of war, but he is certainly too cynical, and far too bitter.

The Nazi soldiers who survive the bombing runs choose to fight back against the encroaching Allies. Some of the civilians who are truly enraged by what has been done to their city, to their people, assist them. The twelve remaining members of their spying group remain in the safehouse and wait out the battles, else they risk being killed by friendly fire.

Salazar loathes that term. There is no such thing as friendly fire. If it kills you, it was not your friend.

Nuremberg falls to the Allies. Grindelwald’s fortress still stands like a blight on the landscape.

Then Berlin is invaded. Soviets and their eastern allies all but destroy the Reichstag, but none among Salazar’s people mourn the loss. Kaiser goes wide-eyed upon hearing the news, apologizes, and then steals a Nazi officer’s car to help liberate her city of birth.

They’ve no sooner learned of U.S. President Roosevelt’s unexpected death when word arrives that Italian dictator Mussolini was executed by his own people. A few days afterward, Hitler is dead by his own hand.

Salazar is not the only one who breathes a sigh of relief when Spencer-Moon and Churchill don’t attempt to follow the others’ ill-timed examples. Stalin is also still hale, which might prove problematic later, but Salazar can only focus on so many difficulties at once.

On 8th May, Nazi Germany formally surrenders. It’s been less than a year since Operation Overlord turned the ocean into bitter wine. The battles in the Pacific are not yet decisive, but they lean more towards victory than failure.

Gellert Grindelwald does not surrender. The non-magical war in Europe might be over, but the Wizarding War is not yet won.

As Salazar predicted, Grindelwald is smarter than Hitler. Instead of sending out his army of magicians to wage offensive campaigns, he withdraws. He fortifies the land around Nurmengard, turning a simple assault into a siege.

There is no more spying to do. With the arrival of the mixed magical and non-magical brigades and the volunteers who’ve joined them, it is now down to fighting. True to his word, Rufus Scrimgeour is with them, and he is as vicious as his visage. Regulus and Lycorus Black arrive in command of a different group, which inclines Salazar to think more favorably of them than he does of their parents. He spies one wizard who is possibly a Longbottom, but that isn’t confirmed until Charles identifies him as Harfang Longbottom. Ignatius Prewett is present where his Auror wife is not, but Lucretia has an infant to look after, and a Minister to keep an eye on. Alphard Black, cousin of Regulus and Lycorus, nephew to Dorea, looks far too young to be on a battlefield at all, but that can be said of many. Robert Hitchens II, brother-in-law to John Morgan, is intent upon revenge on his family’s behalf. Will Potter arrives with the same mixed brigade Rufus fights with; two other Potter cousins, father Victor and son Gilbert, are fighting in another. Henry identifies a cluster of Weasleys, blue-eyed gingers to counter the brown-eyed ginger Prewetts.

Too many of their allies still fall to Grindelwald’s wand.

Churchill is forced by politics to resign on 23rd May, which makes Salazar find an empty building in which to howl curses, some of them literal. This was _not_ the time to leave the Minister for Magic scrambling to continue to fight the rest of the European Wizarding War alone! Britain will be without a Prime Minister until one can be elected, and Churchill is now very limited in what assistance he can provide. The combined Muggle and magical Allied battalions stand strong, but they’re becoming nervous, shifting bodies—and not only because they’re trying to pry Gellert Grindelwald out of an impenetrable magical fortress.

Salazar wakes up in the middle of the night the third week of July, baffled. For the first time he can recall, he dreamed of fire, but not flame. Sunlight, perhaps? The sun itself? He doesn’t know which it could be; he only knows that it was bright, and it was burning.

He gets up and makes a cup of truly horrific instant coffee, the container supplied by one of the occupying Allied soldiers in trade for a decent bloody map. Then he spies Aurelius growling under his breath as he climbs the cellar stairs to the kitchen. Salazar finds an extra tin cup to make another horrible bit of coffee.

“Thanks,” Aurelius grumbles in acceptance. “Why are you awake, Saul?”

“A dream that I don’t understand—”

Words stop making sense. The surge of power beneath his feet is so foreign that it obliterates thought.

Later, all he can tell the others is that it was not magic. It was not good. It was simply power, of a sort that did not belong. It was accompanied by the rumbling echo mindful of an earthquake, but the others later say that they experienced none of these things.

Then comes the sensation of burning. It touches the soles of his feet, spreading upwards, until Salazar feels as if the fire he dreamed of is now consuming _him_ , and it will not _stop_ —

The next time Salazar opens his eyes without pain, there is a canvas tent ceiling over his head. He recognizes the feel of magic in the air and realizes he’s in one of the medical tents for the Wizarding-Muggle Allied battalions, which conveniently swallowed all of the Allied spies they encountered along the way. He feels burnt, but worse is the feeling of sickness lurking behind it.

There is no one nearby when Salazar attempts to reach out, seeking to find whatever has been done to the earth. The worst earthquakes never affect his affinity for the earth in such a fashion. He’s felt nothing like this before, not even when Krakatoa destroyed itself.

Salazar finds that same sensation of bright heat, still so easy to discern. He follows it as far as he can before he has to stop, rather occupied with sicking up over the side of the bed. He breaks out in a sweat that will not cease, an echo of that terrible burning. He’d claim it a fever, but it isn’t. Not his own, at least.

Elsa and Jack are the ones to find him slumped over the side, too weary to even Vanish the scant mess of foul liquid. Jack does most of the work of turning him back over while Elsa begins casting her healing charms, seeking the cause of his illness.

“What is _wrong_ with you, Saul?” Elsa finally asks, confounded by results she has never been taught to read.

Jack helps him to take a drink first. “Give the man a moment, you daft woman.”

“Call me daft again, and I’ll tie your testicles into a knot,” Elsa retorts in German. Jack rolls his eyes, but he’d be wiser not to push his luck.

“I’m an Earth-Speaker,” Salazar finally tells them. “A form of elemental magician tied only to one aspect.”

“What the bloody hell is that?” Jack asks, but Elsa is nodding.

“Yes, that would explain your ease with _Fahrend_ ,” she says. “I have always wondered about that. What has been done to the earth?”

Salazar shakes his head. “I’ve no idea. None. She feels like she is on fire, and she feels ill. I can’t even tell you where. I cannot get close enough without…” He swallows when bile threatens to burn his throat. “Proximity. I’ve experienced nothing like it before.”

Elsa presses her lips together before nodding. “You need to stay where you are—I mean it, Saul. There are enough of us surrounding Grindelwald’s ridiculous castle that we will not perish without your wand.”

“Tell me what day it is, at least.”

“It’s the eighteenth, mate,” Jack answers him. “You missed a few days, there.”

Salazar gives him a blank stare. “Bloody hell.”

“Hopkirk died the same day your mystery illness felled you,” Henry tells him when he and Charles come to visit sometime the next day. Salazar can’t recall the last time a healing sleep felt like it did nothing at all. “Grindelwald has come out several times to participate in the defence of Nurmengard. We suspect he might’ve recognized Hopkirk, because Grindelwald sought him out.”

Charles’s expression is pinched. “And Grindelwald always wins. We’re still losing too many fighters to that blighter’s wand.”

The Elder Wand. Salazar closes his eyes, grieving the death of yet another good person in this stupid fucking war. “Anyone else?”

“Kaiser,” Henry says in regret. “Word came from Berlin just yesterday that she died while fighting with the Allies in Berlin.”

Charles sighs. “Richter, also. When Grindelwald started to take our assaults on Nuremberg seriously, we asked him to stay away from the magical fighting. He saved Lewis’s life, though.”

“Fuck.” Fuck, fuck, _fuck!_ He’s glad that Lewis still lives, but they’ve already paid such a steep price.

“Succinctly put, yes,” Henry agrees. He and Charles both look tired. Salazar doesn’t want to spend the rest of 1945 in an Allied camp in Germany, especially not when he feels like this.

“You’ll need a trump card if you want to stop Grindelwald.”

“Someone Grindelwald won’t expect to fight, you mean,” Henry interprets, exchanging an odd glance with his brother.

“Yes.” Salazar wants to just _tell them_ , but then Charles and Henry would wish to know how he could be so certain. They have to figure this out themselves.

Henry briefly grips his shoulder. “Rest. We’ll ask among the others. Someone here must know _something_ about Grindelwald that we’ve not yet learned about.”

Salazar spends far more of the next week sleeping than he has ever preferred. Every time he attempts to rise, the act of placing his feet upon the ground brings that sick feeling to his magical core. It isn’t poisoning him; the mere awareness is simply enough to leave him gasping and trying not to retch. He suspects Elsa is also sneaking sleeping draughts into his scant meals, hoping it will speed the healing process. Salazar knows better, even if he can’t convince her. It isn’t his body that’s ailing. It’s the earth, and he might ail as long as she does.

Will Potter dies on 20th July. Gilbert Potter on the 21st. His father Victor on the 22nd. Henry’s shoulders look to be breaking under the weight of grief.

Jack Trader is killed by Grindelwald’s lieutenant, Inge, on the 25th. Inge is killed immediately afterwards by Rufus Scrimgeour.

Salazar wakes up on the 26th of July to find his bedside surrounded. Henry and Charles are with him, something they’ve done as often as possible as the fighting continues. Aurelius, Issam, Maxime, Lewis, and Elsa are present, as is Marie. She’s seated next to him, which is baffling when she is meant to be in London.

There is no one else left from their German enclave of spies but for Annette. Salazar hopes to the gods that Annette’s absence means only that she is busy with other matters. “What’s happened?”

“The war is over,” Aurelius announces. He then makes a choked sound before turning away to hide his grieving relief.

“That is…” Salazar struggles to sit up, glaring at Elsa when she tries to stop him, and manages to stay upright without incident. “That is not nearly enough detail.”

“It was your idea. Your trump card,” Charles rests his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “When we went asking about the possibility of an ally Grindelwald might be felled by, someone he used to know…”

“Aberforth Dumbledore knew exactly who we needed. I’m uncertain if I will ever like that man, but I can’t argue with his results,” Henry adds.

“There was a great deal of grand-standing involved. I don’t like him at all,” Maxime says flatly. “But I will tolerate him.”

Salazar glances at Lewis. “They’ve decided not to make sense. Who are they speaking of?”

Lewis grins. “I’ll like the man, even if they don’t. It was Albus Dumbledore, Aberforth’s older brother. Albus and Grindelwald knew each other when they were younger. I suspect romance, but the others won’t go for it. To be honest, I’m not concerned about the truth, not when Albus has defeated Grindelwald.”

“Grindelwald is dead?” Salazar asks in disbelief. He can certainly understand Aurelius’s reaction to that sort of outcome.

“No, but he may not live for long once our allied magical governments put him on trial,” Elsa says. “My people are angry that Hitler escaped justice. Grindelwald will not.”

They must have been waiting for him to wake, as none linger for long afterwards. Elsa has a responsibility to her other patients, but pats Salazar’s hand before departing. Aurelius has suddenly become one of the magical Allies’ primary witnesses and German interpreters, and claims to have a schedule so full that even God would look at it askance. Charles give Salazar a brief nod before he departs, but his skin is too pale, his eyes too grim.

Marie hugs him for only the second time in their acquaintance. She, Issam, and Maxime are off to join Annette to search the nearby liberated camps for their missing family members. That gives Salazar a moment of quiet relief; Annette is one he will not have to grieve for.

 _I should join them,_ Salazar thinks, and his entire being tries to seize up in immediate protest. The idea of seeing the camps again nearly leaves him heaving over the side of the bed again. There are limits as to what he can endure and remain sane, and it seems as if he surpassed them all months ago.

“What happened?” Salazar asks Henry when the latter seats himself in Marie’s vacated chair. Henry’s visage is far too sober for a man meant to be celebrating the end of a war.

“We most likely have a new Prime Minister of Britain, but I’m not certain yet,” Henry replies. “The war against the Japanese in the Pacific is proceeding at such a pace that there have been no fears in asking for Japan’s surrender. Leonard has announced that he’ll be retiring at the end of the year. I think the war has all but done him in. Someone else will have the joy of being Minister for Magic.”

“Henry.”

Henry grimaces and tilts his head up, his eyes focused on a small tear in the canvas that lets dim light enter the tent. “Do you recall my telling you of my cousin Joseph, who died during the Great War?”

Oh, that’s not an auspicious beginning. “I do.”

“Joseph’s widow has survived him by quite a bit. She’s seventy-five now. Kezia Longbottom Potter is her name; she is quite a woman. She was so pleased when her son Victor married Helena Black. She would be one of Phineas Black II’s daughters—not that Lycorus’s rotting branch would notice. They named their only son Gilbert, his grandfather’s second name.”

“Henry,” Salazar repeats gently.

Henry gives in. “The only relatives left to me are my brother, our great-aunt, baby Sam, four surviving cousins from the line of my great-great-uncle Randolph, and our in-laws. Everyone else died in this fucking war.”

Salazar flinches, even though this is not his fault, nor his choice. He wasn’t even aware of how many Potters were in Europe. “I am so very sorry.”

Henry doesn’t seem to have heard his words at all. “Charlotte has already invited Kezia and Helena to live with her in the London townhouse. I—” He chokes down a pitiful sound of grief. “Will didn’t even get to hear the news that Charlotte safely bore their child on the sixteenth. I only found out just this morning. She named him Samuel George. She doesn’t even know about Will yet.”

“Gods,” Salazar whispers. Will was a good man. He deserved to know of that happiness, no matter how brief.

“If not for a few days’ difference, I suspect her baby would be George William Junior.” Henry sighs and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “Cousins Walter and Gilbert were born sterile. Cousin Robert is uninterested in women. Cousin Olivia’s only child died young. Myself, Charles, Monty, and George are the only Potters remaining who are capable of carrying on the family name.”

Salazar stares at Henry in disbelief. “I know there were quite a number of magical Potter branches at the turn of the century—”

Henry shakes his head. “All gone. All of them, Saul. Truly all of them. If not from old age, then accidents happened, or they died in the Great War, or it was _this_ war. We lost our cousins to the Nazis, their widows and children to the Blitz, to illness …it may sound a bit selfish, but I’m glad that my father and Uncle Walter died before things became so dire for the family. Their generation, and the ones before them—they were extensive, Saul. It would have been hard for them to see how decimated we are now.”

“Your generation was not exactly empty, Henry.”

“I suppose not, but my second cousin Carl wasn’t married. Neither was Alex—he turned eighteen and followed Carl to Europe. They died two weeks ago. Their father John, my father’s first cousin once removed, died on the very last day of the European Wizarding War. Just yesterday. One more day and he would have gone home. Monty and Samuel are the last remaining Potter children until they prove themselves capable of surviving long enough to marry and have children of their own.”

Salazar hesitates before giving voice to something that has been suspicion only. “You don’t believe Dorea will ever have children, do you?”

“No. Dorea suspects her father Cygnus cursed her before his unlamented death. If he didn’t, her dear uncle Sirius would certainly not have hesitated, nor Pollux or Cassiopeia. A curse is so much more _socially acceptable_ than disowning their sister for marrying well,” Henry spits bitterly. “Worse, it is a curse that can’t be proven.”

Politics would keep Henry from demanding satisfaction from the Black family even if the curse could be proven. “Walburga would be more likely to be the guilty party when it comes to cursing family members. That one is as mad as her father-in-law.”

Henry smiles without humor. “You’re probably right. Dorea’s youngest sister is the most spiteful of them all, and given the rumors that fly about regarding Pollux and Cassiopeia Black, that is quite a feat.”

Salazar frowns. “You sound as if you and Elizabetha have given up on the idea of more children, as well.”

“Elizabetha and I knew after Monty was born that he would be the only child we would have. We considered adoption, but then the war began, and now…I think Europe has worn me down, Saul. I will cherish Monty and be grateful for what my wife and I were granted.”

Henry retrieves the handkerchief from his breast pocket and unashamedly dabs at his eyes. “When the European Wizarding War began, there were still thirty-two Potters in Wizarding Britain. Discounting our in-laws, now there are only nine.”

Salazar closes his eyes for a moment. Nine. No wonder his little brother had been so utterly alone in the world. “I’m—I am very sorry. It will not help your grief, but believe me when I say that I understand what you have lost.”

Henry gives him a brief look before nodding. “Your losses are far worse. It makes me feel selfish to speak of my own.”

“No. No man’s sorrow should be measured against another’s.” Salazar glances around the tent, which holds more camp beds than it did eight days ago. Too many have sheets that are pulled up to hide the faces of the dead.

“I want to go home.” Only after the words are spoken does Salazar realize they were his own.

Henry pats his hand, just as Elsa had. “So do I.”

* * * *

Salazar’s last debrief with the SIS on third August before he formally—and rather forcefully—retires from their service is with both Minister for Magic Spencer-Moon and new Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who seems to have taken to the existence of magic quite well. Salazar supposes it helped that Wizarding Britain fought alongside the Allied forces to defeat Nazi Germany while also fighting a magical war of their own. Henry joins him as the most senior British magician present aside from Salazar’s apparent Muggle seniority; Charles declines the opportunity to yell at his Minister in person. The others are still in Europe…or in too many cases, being buried there.

He also discovers what felled him on 16th July.

“The Americans admitted to conducting a test of a nuclear weapon. An atomic bomb.”

Salazar stares at Leonard in disbelief. He’d heard of the experimental thoughts regarding fusion and fission as potential sources of powering electrical equipment and kinetic energy, respectively, but he seems to have missed the moment when someone took hold of the latter and ran with it towards nuclear bombs.

Henry is less well-read in the matters of non-magical science, but he listens and learns, and he is not a fool. “What sort of atoms were used in this bomb?”

“Plutonium, I believe,” Attlee answers, but then he grimaces. “There is a rumor that there will be more detonations. I’m not certain I agree with their intentions. I was taught that large doses of radiation is rather bad for you.”

“It is, yes,” Salazar replies. Later, he can’t remember the rest of the bloody meeting. He’s much too caught on the idea of the detonation of radioactive elements, deliberately so, on _land_. That science wishes to do so again smacks of madness.

He doesn’t listen to the next debrief, which is meant for everyone British and part of SIS, newly returned to British soil. They’re a depressingly small number, and a rather depressed lot. Some of them enjoyed their jobs too much; the rest sensibly enjoyed their jobs too little.

Aside from reciting things these men most likely already know, Salazar thinks Attlee to be a decent man, the right sort of Prime Minister for a Britain no longer at war. Churchill is also a good man, but Salazar greeted him yesterday and found someone who was mentally stumbling. Even though Churchill is the newly named Leader of the Opposition, he has not yet set his mind to peace. If anything, he seems prepared for more war, this time from the Soviets. Salazar could only share a drink and agree with Winston; Stalin already refuses to give back what Soviet Allies claimed during Nazi Germany’s invasion and defeat.

Salazar goes to the Willow House and receives a hug from Dorea, who thanks him for looking after the family. He protests at once, as he was a bit too busy being ill to do so during the final battles. She counters that he did a fine job before that time, so it still matters, and she is thanking him for it.

All Salazar can really tell her of the last battle is that Albus Dumbledore dueled Gellert Grindelwald, and Grindelwald lost. When Salazar asked about the wand Grindelwald held, none could quite remember what it looked like. It wasn’t found after Albus Dumbledore disarmed Grindelwald, and the witnesses were a bit more concerned with confining Grindelwald to care about a wand. Charles theorized that perhaps someone stepped on the wand and snapped it like a twig, and was rather taken aback when Salazar viciously expressed his hope that Charles was correct.

He is never that lucky. More than likely, the Hallow protected itself, and is now in some new fool’s unfortunate hand.

Alexis enters the house by way of the kitchen door for the back garden, spies him, and flings her armload of vegetables at the countertop so she can hug him. Salazar lets out a very faint sigh of relief that she not only recognized him, but willingly touched him without fear. Perhaps she will be well, and all his fears meaningless.

“I can go home now, yes?” Alexis asks after seeing for herself that Salazar is in one piece. “I wish very much to see my brother.” Then she hesitates. “And to see if there is any family left to us that did not choose Grindelwald or the Nazis.”

“That, I cannot answer, but yes, you can go home. We should do Dorea the kindness of taking her home first, though.”

“Oh, never you mind about that,” Dorea waves them off. “I’ll return by Floo. I’m wanting to see Charles right now, and I’m hopeful the feeling is still mutual. Oh, and it’s fully expected that you will keep in touch, Saul.”

“Of course,” Salazar answers, thinking that the Potters have now welcomed a busybody into their lives they might soon wish to be without. “There are funerals to see to, after all.”

Dorea gives him a grieved look after tossing powder into the Floo. “If Henry gets lost in the arrangements, I’ll make certain you know when they’re to be scheduled.”

“Thank you.”

After Dorea departs, Salazar takes Alexis by the hand, uses Desplazarse to bring them to the southernmost tip of England, and then crosses the Channel. He avoids Normandy. He still dreams of sandy shores soaked with spilled wine that he always realizes, too late, is not wine at all.

Aurelius is beyond grateful to see Alexis doing so well. Alexis immediately makes off her brother, wanting to hear more of the German efforts to restore some form of working magical government in their country that isn’t Grindelwald.

Elsa has moved on from their encampment in Nuremberg and is now touring with those who are tending to the survivors of the camps. The Western Allies are calling the results of the camps a holocaust, which is certainly accurate.

Marie, Annette, and others of their people call it the _Sho’ah_. Destruction.

Issam, Maxime, and Marie cross paths with Annette often, usually to hand over lists of survivors from other camps that Annette copies out by hand before passing them along. Elsa makes her own copies, and the lists posted in her handwriting help Salazar to discover that Marie has found her younger sister—in ill health, but alive. Annette has a surviving brother. Issam found his parents in a Soviet camp for POWs, which left him baffled and putting his nascent law skills to work at once, as neither of his parents were soldiers. Lewis returned home with an injury to his left leg that could not be fully healed, but won’t stop him from taking on his inheritance. The mixed Muggle-Wizarding battalions are returning to British soil, where they will be formally disbanded. The non-magical will not be Obliviated, but have vowed to say nothing of magic, wizards, or a magical war; their families will only know that they are coming home after their service in World War II.

There is nothing more to do. Salazar sits on a crumbling stone wall in the ruins of old Nuremberg, watching soldiers and civilians perform their tasks, and thinks on how many people should still be alive. He also thinks on visiting Rowena’s tomb, but isn’t certain he can cope with a small island of Bavarian peace in a sea of death.

“And what of you?” Aurelius asks when he finds Salazar sitting on the wall. “What are your plans, Saul Luiz?”

“Now that I’ve seen to everyone who remains to be seen, I’ll be returning home,” Salazar replies.

 _And if they’re to be detonating more nuclear bombs, I’ll be preparing for what may be a very lengthy illness_.

Unfortunately, he isn’t wrong. He just doesn’t expect how terrible it will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief mention of a child's death. Injuries from fucking bombings and civilian deaths (all of which historically actually happened and I really should've put Nurmengard SOMEWHERE ELSE, FUCK). War is terrible. Punch a fucking Nazi.


	6. Descendants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“And that, Saul, is the day I learned that most of my constituents and contemporaries are complete imbeciles."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd and semi-flailed at by @norcumii!
> 
> I don't think this chpter has any dire warnings needed, except that August 1945 happens, which was a terrible time to be Japanese. Or an Earth-Speaker. (The atomic bombings were tactically and morally NOT OKAY, or necessary. At all. Bugger off and do some research if you believe otherwise.)
> 
> Notes at the end regarding Myrtle Warren's unfortunate end.

Salazar lurks in the back row of the church hosting the Potter family’s funerals, a stranger to almost everyone involved. He prefers it that way, and Leonard Spencer-Moon wanted a reason to hide in the back, anyway. The Potters are sensible enough not to blame the Minister for Magic for their wartime losses, but others have threatened retaliation, duels, poisonings, and any other sort of mischief they feel they might get away with.

“At least you’ve already announced your retirement,” Salazar murmurs as the service drones on. From the single glance he caught of Elizabetha’s face, he strongly suspects her to be meditating upright with her eyes open, ignoring the long-winded priest. “I imagine it would be worse if you hadn’t.”

“I don’t even want to think about what that might be like,” Leonard replies. They’re both relieved when the service moves on to the Potter crypt in Chiltern Hills, where they can again lurk on the edge of the mourning crowd and be largely ignored.

“It’s so easy to spot the ones who are anti-isolationist,” Leonard says, tilting his head at others. “Count the umbrellas.”

“The modern ones, at least,” Salazar agrees. He rather likes the one he purchased a decade ago, which has a perfectly serviceable sword lurking within the handle. Too many wars in too brief a time have made him justifiably paranoid, and there is another war that will begin…soon.

That is all he and Nizar know. _Soon._

“Did that damned book not say?” Salazar asked his brother’s portrait not two days ago.

“No!” Nizar rolled his eyes. “ _Hogwarts: A History_ wasn’t useful for much of anything. Why would it be useful for that? I know from an entirely different book that the Ministry _recognized_ the war in 1975, but Death Eaters were killing people for years before that!”

Salazar rather hopes another Half-blood will be in charge of the Ministry when that all comes to a head. Leonard’s presence helped keep things in balance in the Wizengamot, especially when too many of the Pure-blooded idiot families wanted to know why Britain wasn’t following Grindelwald’s excellent lead. Salazar wonders if they’d be so willing to follow Grindelwald into his new prison cell.

Charlotte wanders over after the service is concluded, using a charm to keep the rain and the damp off herself and the infant she carries. “I wanted to introduce you,” she says softly, blinking fresh tears out of her eyes. “Pardon me. It seems all I do of late is leak in inappropriate places.”

Salazar grins, though Leonard develops a sudden fit of coughing. “I’m not bothered in the least. This is young Samuel George Potter, then?”

Charlotte nods, pulling back the pink blanket to reveal more of the baby’s face. He has his father’s black hair, but Salazar rather suspects those infant blue eyes are going to turn grey to match those of his mother. “It was an easy birth, despite all my fears. He has the proper number of fingers and toes, and he can wail like a banshee.”

Salazar brushes the back of his knuckle along the baby’s red cheek, catching a divinatory flash of curly brown hair and violet eyes. “And excellent taste in women, eventually.”

Charlotte handles the random moment of divination with good grace. “Then I hope she’s as kind as she is pretty. Leonard, she had best not be one of your granddaughters!”

Leonard looks miffed. “It isn’t my job to arrange my children’s marriages, much less the weddings of my grandchildren. They can make a hash of that all on their own!”

“Saul, that’s Helena,” Charlotte says quietly, tilting her head at a black-haired woman. Most of her features are otherwise hidden beneath a very dark veil. “The poor dear. I knew there was a chance I might lose Will to the war, and I’m so grateful I have Sam, but…but she lost everything, Saul. Helena has been a good companion these past few weeks, and doesn’t complain when a baby’s wail wakes her in the night, but Helena’s heart is broken by the loss of her husband and son. I worry.”

“What of Madam Potter?” Leonard asks. “I imagine this has not been easy on Kezia, either, not after losing Joseph to the Great War.”

“She took ill last year.” Charlotte’s voice drops until it is all but inaudible. “Helena and I are tending her, and Henry is arranging for extra assistance, but—well, she was a Longbottom first. She’ll either succumb quickly, or outlive us all out of spite. Oh, hello, Monty!”

“Hi, Aunt Charlotte,” Monty replies, dubbing her an aunt in the way of young Pure-bloods addressing the older generation. Of late, the title of Cousin seems to be reserved for those who are several times removed.

Charlotte gives Monty a brief look of pursed lips. “Are you all right?”

Monty scuffs his shiny black shoes in the wet grass, a remaining sign of youthful mannerisms. “I’m all right. I hope you and the baby are doing well.”

“We are, thank you—oh, my apologies, but that would be Helena wishing to depart. I shouldn’t linger for long out in the damp with the baby, anyway.” Charlotte bids them farewell and hurries to catch up with her Black cousin; like Dorea, Helena properly acknowledges her kin, though Helena doesn’t seem to have lost any of a Black’s pretentious airs.

“Are you looking forward to your next year of Hogwarts, young man?” Leonard asks, settling on a safe topic that isn’t an excessive number of funerals.

Monty nods. “I suppose I am, Minister Spencer-Moon. It’ll be nice to not be worried about Dad and Uncle Charles so much, and…” He swallows. “Uncle Will told me in one of his last letters that I deserved what I’d got, agreeing to be a Prefect last year. I don’t really want to do it again this year, but I won’t have to worry about it for a fair bit, anyway.” Monty is then called away before Salazar can ask what that means.

Leonard shrugs when the question is directed at him. “Armando announced to the Ministry last week that he was thinking of delaying the opening of Hogwarts this term, what with so many of our people coming home from the war. Families needing time together, he said.”

“But you don’t think his reasons are the truth.”

“There was a bit of nasty business last year, in June. I don’t believe it was handled well at all, but as you’ll no doubt recall, I was a bit preoccupied at the time with affairs in Europe,” Leonard says testily. “Armando couldn’t justify closing the school during the previous term, not when it was safer for our children to be far away from any German targets. With the war ended, I imagine he’s now trying to smooth things over. No doubt he hopes the others will forget that a student died under his watch.”

Salazar glances at him. “I didn’t hear about that,” he says, but he remembers it. At the age of twenty-one, he saw her death reflected by the water in a silver bowl. He even knows who caused the student’s death, but it’s the _when_ that has finally been answered.

“Oh, it was a terrible business. Armando pinned the student’s death on an Acromantula, of all things.” Leonard sighs. “And that, Saul, is the day I learned that most of my constituents and contemporaries are complete imbeciles. They _believed_ him. It was necessary to intervene to get an innocent student out of Azkaban, and that was after the school’s board of governors had already judged him guilty without trial, snapped the poor child’s wand, and expelled him from Hogwarts! The one thing I couldn’t do was reinstate the boy at school. The governors hold sway in that matter, as does Armando Dippet, and neither were willing to change their minds. The poor lad’s an orphan with no family, but one of the staff at Hogwarts brought him back to the school grounds to help with upkeep. I imagine Rubeus will be given the job officially now that he’s properly of age.”

“What are you going to do about the murder, then, if the murderer still roams free?” Salazar asks, curious and more than a little concerned.

“Retire, as I told you,” Leonard says dryly. “If they’ll let me. Our bloody heroic Chief Warlock is already suggesting I should wait a year or two instead of abandoning my office right at the war’s end. My idiot constituents are listening to Albus, too, even though Albus couldn’t be bothered to concern himself with the war until it was no longer much of a concern at all.” Leonard huffs, wrinkling his nose and mustache. “I don’t think there is anything _to_ do, not really. Whatever was causing the school’s difficulties stopped with that poor student’s death. Some say they themselves must then have been the culprit, but the poor girl most certainly didn’t commit suicide. I’d say the true culprit graduated that year, and is most likely off causing trouble elsewhere.”

 _Tom Marvolo Riddle didn’t graduate until this past June,_ Salazar thinks, but doesn’t say such a thing to Leonard. Right now, Tom Riddle is still marked with the shine of an accomplished recent graduate. The number of accolades he’s been buried under is quite frankly disconcerting. It does cause Salazar to wonder why Tom would cease terrorizing the school with only one victim claimed, especially as he had a full school term remaining afterwards.

Henry is the last to meet with them as the sun sets. The only family left in the Hills is Elizabetha, waiting with Monty; all of their guests and few remaining kin have gone home. “Thank you both for coming. And thank you for not using this as an opportunity for politics,” Henry adds.

Leonard shakes his head. “I never do, though by the _Prophet’s_ accountings, you wouldn’t know it. My sympathies to your family, Henry.” He shakes Henry’s hand, then knocks the water from his umbrella before Disapparating.

Henry grips Salazar’s hand and refuses to let go after a simple shake. “Dorea wasn’t speaking idly. You saved my life, Charles’s life—even Will’s life, though we lost him later. You said it yourself, Saul. We’re family, you and I, and you’ll remember to treat us as such.”

Salazar smiles and nods, accepting defeat before an argument can be formulated. He’s not certain he wants to argue against Henry’s declaration, though he most likely should. “I will not. I need to spend time in my own home for a bit, breathing familiar air, but I’ll be about.”

“Good.” Henry releases his hand and steps back. “Teej is on the tenth of this month. My wife is rather fond of the day.”

“I don’t remember what that one is for,” Salazar admits.

“To be honest, I’ve been married for twenty-six years, and I’m still not certain I’ve absorbed all the nuances involved—and Elizabetha declares it simple.” Henry shakes his head. “Teej,” he repeats.

“Teej, yes, agreed, lest you drag me out of my own house!”

* * * *

Salazar doesn’t sleep very often. He considers it an odd side effect of his age, one he experiences in growing frequency as the centuries pass. The Great War, now being referred to as World War I, did not help; World War II has made it so much harder to close his eyes in the darkness. He imagines the only thing keeping him from being destroyed by shellshock is Mind Magic, and even that’s been a bit of a struggle to balance. He does not have perfect recall, but there is still _so much_ in his head, and his mind likes to ponder violence and grief more often than it likes to lounge in remembered moments of joy.

When men poisoned the earth with spreading, noxious fire in July, Salazar had been asleep, and his dreams granted him warning. This time, he does not have a warning but for the sudden, impending sense that _something_ is about to occur. Given that he’s spent his entire afternoon attending funerals, it’s an alarming sensation that nearly makes him panic.

Salazar puts down the knives he was using to carve up garden vegetables for a late meal, noting the time as almost fifteen minutes past eleven o’clock. He goes to the sitting room, intending to turn on the radio to see if there is news of any incoming danger, and thinks it very odd that his house has suddenly become dark.

The next time Salazar blinks his eyes open, it’s to find bright morning sunlight illuminating the ceiling above him. He knows at once that something must have gone badly wrong, as blinking seems to be the extent of his ability to move. He feels like he is being pressed into a soft surface—a bed, he supposes—by gravity herself. He’s only ever experienced this weakness of the body after long periods of illness, or extended recovery from injury.

He also has no idea where he is. This is not a ceiling of the Willow House, nor is that one of his own windows.

“Where the hell am I?” he intends to say, but instead utters a horrific croak.

Salazar jerks his head back against a pillow when there is suddenly a narrow-chinned face peering down at him. His heart only begins to calm its panicked beating when he recognizes Monty. “Sssshit. Don’t…”

“Sorry,” Monty apologizes. “It’s just that you haven’t moved in a while. I’ll go fetch Mum!”

Monty bounces off, leaving Salazar more baffled than before. He is also panting for breath just from managing two entire words. Bloody hell, what happened?

Monty does not just return with his mother, but also with his father. Salazar feels an immediate sense of relief. Words are difficult, but Henry was a fast learner when it came to the signs and signals of the hands used by spies on the battleground. “Where am I?”

“You’re a spy like Aunt Dorea’s friend Madam Marie? That’s grand!” Monty declares. Salazar stares at him; Henry and Elizabetha must have decided upon English propriety. He then suffers the belated realization that he didn’t exactly give them permission to tell anyone of his profession.

“Saul is asking where he is,” Henry properly interprets, pulling out the only bedside chair for Elizabetha. Monty leans over the back of her chair, his pointed chin almost digging into her shoulder, but she tolerates it with fond warmth. “You’re in my ancestral home, Saul. This is Potter Manor. More specifically, you’ve been residing in one of our guest rooms for nearly a month.”

Salazar wheezes out his next breath in shock. What the bloody _fuck_ happened?

Elizabetha properly interprets the expression on his face. “Harry told us that a mere testing of an atomic device made you very ill in July. The Americans made an official announcement not long after they detonated another device. The moment the BBC relayed the news to English listeners, my husband knew at once that he should see to your health. You never rescinded the Fidelius Charm’s permissions, or those of your wards.”

“I found you on the bloody floor. Literally,” Henry adds in an apologetic tone. “Aurelius spoke of how you reacted when the other atomic test occurred. This detonation seems to have done you a far worse turn.”

“Then they did it _again,_ ” Elizabetha hisses in sudden outrage. “Sixth August and then ninth August! We had barely calmed a raging fever, and then you suffered through—” She breaks off into a dialect of Punjabi that Salazar can’t remember how to speak. If she’d used Hindi, he might’ve stood a chance.

Salazar thinks on it and gestures at Henry. “Where?” He means the detonation sights, and Henry, bless him, understands at once.

“Japan. The Americans dropped nuclear devices on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while still pummeling their islands with more _conventional_ bombs. An estimated hundred thousand are dead. I don’t know if we’ll ever be told exactly how many were killed by these two atomic devices, but between the bombs and the Soviet campaign against Japan…the war is officially at an end, Saul. Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender on the fifteenth. An official treaty, one that does them no favors at all, was signed a few days ago on the second of September. Japan’s wizards are not happy with anyone in the international magical community, not after we so-called Allies allowed the Muggles to rain down so much poison and death.”

Salazar makes a face and combines it with a weak finger-signing. “No blame.”

“No. I don’t much blame them, either,” Henry agrees. “But that is not for you to concern yourself with, not right now. I’d prefer you to focus on regaining your health. At least we can be certain there will be no more of these foolish atomic bombings.”

Salazar thinks on his recent conversation with Attlee and tries not to grimace. He is not so certain of that.

* * * *

Salazar’s time in the Potter household is not unpleasant. Quite the opposite, really, but it’s been a very long time since he has been a lingering guest in another’s home, and he’s become unused to all it involves.

It takes him another week after waking to manage getting out of bed without help. Then it is yet another few days before Salazar is capable of clothing himself and bathing on his own.

He also does quite a bit of fantasizing, thinking on killing everyone involved in the creation and detonation of atomic bombs. It isn’t they who are forced to deal with the side effects. Their families are not the ones who mourn. Those are not American towns that now bleed radiation into the air and the earth.

Salazar doesn’t set foot on the ground floor for a full month after he wakes. Each time he tries, his feet feel the distant echo of what burnt Japan. The earth will calm herself, but not until she is done sharing her agony with everyone capable of understanding her.

In the meantime, Salazar is beyond familiar with the guest room, so he spends the rest of September exploring the manor’s first storey. There is no second storey beyond different sections of attic storage; whoever built the home decided upon the sturdiness of a house spread across the ground rather than rising heights. The furniture and the woodwork are most often expensive oak, but not lavish in detail. Some rooms have bright hanging fabrics, the bold colors from the _hindavi_ lands, while others are white sheets and walls with dark-stained wood in a simple, soothing contrast. The Potter family makes it clear with their décor that they live in a home, not a structure that could also present itself as a museum.

Monty always leaves his bedroom door open, unafraid of a stranger’s prying eyes. His room is still caught between a growing child’s tastes and a young man’s refinement. The scarf of Gryffindor colors and the Quidditch pennant on the wall are new and cherished, but the wall opposite them has something far, far older: a tapestry showing all four Houses of Hogwarts. Salazar finds his feet drawn back to it again and again, letting ancient familiarity soothe his churning thoughts.

Salazar is caught staring one morning, but Monty isn’t offended. “That one’s been in our family a really long time,” he explains proudly. “Dad says the tapestry’s hung in every bedroom for everyone that’s attended Hogwarts for as long as he can recall. Great-great uncle Simon told Dad that the family is descended from Godric Gryffindor himself, and the tapestry might’ve belonged to him.”

Salazar nods in acknowledgement, though the tale is not quite correct. Godric owned no such tapestry. He didn’t keep tapestries in his quarters, as they reminded him of things he preferred not to think about. Sedemai never minded the lack; that one had been a minimalist before there was a word for the concept. What is true is that this tapestry is old enough to remember that black dominated Hufflepuff’s colors just as much as gold. Helga’s black badger stands in front of a complex golden knot that her people learned from the Picts, with no other background needed. The symbol’s outer edges are marked by the border of a golden knotted cord instead of the heraldic nonsense that was added centuries later. Helga designed her own seal out of necessity, a princess politely exiled from her own kingdom, and she refused to apologize for it.

The tapestry still recalls Rowena’s preference for bronze to accompany her primary love of blue robes and silver jewelry; the bird displayed in a silhouette of outstretched flight is still her beloved raven, not that blasted eagle. The heraldic symbols that she would have been entitled to after their creation are missing from the modern emblem and the original both. This tapestry emblem is still Rowena’s family seal, with its blue background, bronze frame, and the silver Greek letters in Gaulish that dub it Raven’s Claw.

Gryffindor’s red emblem, Godric’s seal, is true scarlet, not the odd darker red-brown of the last few centuries. Moreover, the colors are properly reversed: a scarlet griffon guards a golden arched doorway with an entwined gold and scarlet rope as its border. Salazar easily understood how the griffon could come to be gold, what with so many idiots wandering about Europe with gold rearing lions on their heraldic crests, but not how the archway could be lost. It makes sense—annoyingly so—that the griffon became that same sort of rearing lion, but to place it on red and cream squares, to be rid of all the gold but for a few artistic flourishes on the added heraldic symbols that are truly overblown? A crown of the moon, a star, and a pyramid on a knight’s helm, with feathers and the bloody lion? They might as well have declared Godric a saint by adding all of the new nonsense. At the very least, Sedemai’s door could have become the common heraldic _bridge_.

The tapestry’s Slytherin green emblem is still brilliant emerald rather than the duller green in use now. Salazar wonders if anyone has ever questioned why this symbol shows a silver horned basilisk rearing up in front of a silver rowan tree on that emerald field, and why the field’s borders are just hinted silver threads. The modern emblem’s ivy vines are amusing, if unnecessary; the knight’s helm with yet another serpent on the top is sort of hilarious. The removal of the rowan tree has always irritated him, though. Salazar much prefers the original seal of his father’s House.

Henry told Salazar that they were in east Somerset, and Somerset is not far removed from Winchester. Galiena’s work was always unmistakable to his senses, imbued as it is with the sense of family. She was one of the few artists of their time who insisted upon using true metal for her silver, gold, and bronze embroidery thread. Given the slight changes in design, someone commissioned this tapestry from Galiena in her later years, but her hand was still steady and true.

“No matter who owned the tapestry, it is a gift that should always be treasured, as few remember the school’s first colors and symbols any longer,” Salazar says.

“I did think my tie was sort of…well…” Monty glances at the scarf he wore against the early morning chill, which is just as dully red-brown as the pennant. The gold isn’t gold at all, but a rather strident and insistent yellow with undertones of green. “It doesn’t really match, does it? The painting of old Godric in the Great Hall has aged a bit, so it’s hard to tell if he’s wearing dark red or bright scarlet, but his armor is certainly still gold enough to make a point.”

Salazar has a rather baffling moment of mental vertigo. He doesn’t recall Godric ever owning gold armor, but that doesn’t mean his memory is correct. “What do the others think of your opinions regarding the colors?”

Monty grins. “I had to take a photograph of the tapestry and show it off at school before people would believe me that the school colors had changed. Then I got accused of it being nonsense because it’s a griffon and a basilisk instead of a lion and a snake!”

“How horrid it must be to them that two guardian animals once stood for those Houses rather than a temperamental adder and a male lion who’d laze about, letting the rest of his pride do the work. Any other complaints?” Salazar asks, bemused. “You’ll hear no criticism from me for voicing them.”

Monty frowns. “Ravenclaw. There are quite a number of eagles lurking about Ravenclaw tower, and on Ravenclaw designs. It seems sort of… treacherous.”

Salazar eyes him. “Why do you think it treacherous?”

“Well, Dad insisted that I be educated beyond the bounds of Britain, magical and Muggle alike. The United States across the pond, they have an eagle for their national mascot, but that wasn’t what one of their country’s founders wanted. He said an eagle was daft—literally, mind you—and they should choose a more intelligent bird. Crows are certainly smarter, so…why change it?”

“Why, indeed?”

“And the lion on Gryffindor things—why change it from a griffon? Then with Slytherin…” Monty points at the emerald portion of the tapestry. “I’m terrible in Herbology, and even I know the significance of a rowan tree. They got rid of the tree, and now it’s just a plain silver snake sticking its tongue out on a green background with nonsense wrapped around it. It’s dull, is what it is.”

Salazar smiles, making certain the family ring he still wears on his left middle finger is turned inwards. “What of the badger? Any complaints there?”

Monty grins. “Absolutely not. Badgers are terrifying. Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t tried to chase an irritable one out of their garden.”

When Salazar finally steps onto the ground floor of the manor in October, he recognizes the age of the stone beneath his feet at once. “When was this built?” Salazar asks Henry, gazing up at the open gallery. He’d leaned against the oak railing often these last few weeks, and still he hadn’t quite grasped the design of the manor. The Potter home is only just large enough to be called a manor and not elicit laughter from snobbish Pure-bloods. The gallery, the wood, the styling—all of it is _very_ English, but an open gallery in a home this size would be considered by many to waste valuable space that could otherwise be put to use by providing more rooms on the first storey. Instead, they’re granted an open ceiling overhead, though it lacks the arches of the south.

“Oh, I can never recall the exact date. The early sixteenth century, at the latest,” Henry replies. “Why?”

“Tudor architecture,” Salazar says. “They’d finally rediscovered the delight of a high ceiling, but an open gallery like this, one that goes all the way around this massive room …that was not the done thing. I’m used to seeing this more in southern lands, though they tend to also be areas heavily influenced by the old caliphates.”

Henry looks delighted. “You’re exactly right. I still own a cottage built during that era in the village nearby, which has stairs going up to a proper first storey. It’s one of the old homesteads before my ancestors built this manor. A many-times great-grandfather is supposed to have married a woman who wished to escape the politics of Morocco, either a revolt or a civil war or…a coup. I’m not certain I recall that, either.”

“If it was Morocco, that would have been during the Wattasid dynasty. It could have been all three.”

Henry seems amused by that. “My ancestor couldn’t concede the architecture entirely, though when I was a child, there was still a fountain with a seating area in the center of this room. My uncle, James, unfortunately took it into his head that we needed to be far more English in our habits. Rose and I begged him not to get rid of the fountain, but he wasn’t the sort of man who took the whims of children into account.”

Salazar glances down at the floor, which still has colorful tiles spreading outward in concentric rings from a center point that no longer exists. “And yet he left this behind.”

“My grandmother was a Prewett, Saul. Grandmother Harriet might not have stopped Uncle James from removing the fountain after my grandfather’s death, but she threatened him within an inch of his life if he dared attempt to do away with a perfectly serviceable floor.”

Salazar nods, but he’s a bit distracted by the mentioned names. Harriet. James. If he’d needed any further evidence that Henry’s son will be James Potter’s father, that certainly would have been hint enough.

By the time Salazar can stand outside on morning-damp grass in the front garden without feeling ill, it’s almost Hallowe’en. Salazar imagines that if he were closer to Japan, it would still be too soon to plant his feet on bare earth. He learned his lesson in July, though; he has not once sought out the source of that poison heat.

“Good morning, Monty,” he says before the boy can sneak up on him. Monty keeps trying, but he deals with a spy and an Earth Speaker both. “Should you not be attending to your lessons?”

“I finished the first part, so Mum let me off for a bit. I think she’s now beyond glad that Hogwarts is reopening after the winter holidays.”

Salazar nods, understanding Elizabetha’s frustration. Just overhearing the expected curriculum for a student in his sixth year made Salazar want to throttle the life out of a succession of Head Teachers, and all but one of them are currently too dead to receive the privilege. Elizabetha, meanwhile, is a magician of very Eastern thought and learning trying to cope with Hogwarts’ insistence upon solely Western ideals. Monty easily learns lessons from her regarding ancient _hindavi_ and her family’s Punjabi magics, but she struggles to comprehend the reasoning behind certain Western spells. It puts her in a difficult position, but Henry stated quite plainly, without artifice, that he is a terrible teacher and would hate to ruin his son’s education by attempting to assist. Charles and Dorea are both employed within the Ministry, and thus unavailable. Charlotte has an infant, an ailing mother-in-law, and a grieving cousin to tend to. The other Potter relatives are either quite advanced in years, or they remained in Europe to assist with the repairs to the Continent’s magical infrastructure.

Salazar has thought to volunteer to help Elizabetha with Monty’s education, but keeps his silence. He’s taught adults to be spies, to use their magic to survive; he has taught those who were ready to be apprentices to certain specific branches of magic. He has not taught a child anything of magic since he was wed to Isis in the 1600s. They never had children of their own, so instead they looked after the children of Sherwood-on-the-Marsh, though very few of that lot were ever born with magic.

Monty wanders over to stand next to Salazar, hands in his trouser pockets. He surpassed Salazar’s height during Salazar’s convalescence, though it’s doubtful he will grow much taller. “I hate this. Not because Mum’s not good at teaching, nothing like that. If I were in her place, I think I’d have torn out my hair by now. It’s just…”

Salazar nudges Monty with his elbow. “Go on. I am very difficult to offend.”

“We’re not meant to speak ill of adults,” Monty says, and then scowls, “but I think Dippet was trying to cover his own arse by not having school for this part of term. The war is a great excuse, but this is going to make the rest of term at Hogwarts a mad rush. Not everyone has someone at home who can help them with lessons.”

Salazar feels a headache form at the very thought. Dippet must indeed be a fool if he forgets so easily how many of his students are of non-magical parentage. Salazar should place himself in the same category, as he didn’t give the school’s temporary closing a thought beyond his concern for Tom Riddle’s crimes. “Headmaster Dippet sounds like quite the character.”

“I think Headmaster Dippet is an idiot,” Monty says in a flat voice, sounding a fair bit like his father. “He wants to be a politician, like Dad, but he’s _really_ bad at it. Then he wants to be Headmaster, but he’ll listen to the Minister or the board of governors first, instead of…you know. Then there’s what happened with Myrtle Warren in 1944. I think that’s why they _really_ closed things down for this half of the year.”

Salazar knows what the Minister knows of the affair, but Monty was in the school when Tom Riddle murdered that girl. “What happened to this Myrtle you mention, Monty?”

“She died. Well, that’s not quite fair. She was murdered in the girls’ toilet by some creature that was supposed to have been called forth from the Chamber of Secrets.”

Salazar raises both eyebrows. “Chamber of Secrets?” Leonard hadn’t mentioned anything about a chamber.

Monty looks surprised. “You’ve never heard of it?”

“I am of Castile, Fleamont Potter.”

“Right, yeah. Sorry.” Monty wrinkles his nose. “The Chamber of Secrets is supposed to be a legend, but I suppose with someone claiming to open it, and someone else dying from it, then maybe it’s not such a legend after all. Salazar Slytherin is supposed to have put a Chamber of Secrets somewhere in the school that houses a creature that’s meant to come out and eat all of the Muggle-born students for their impure blood.”

Salazar tries not to gape at the lad. “That…sounds ridiculous.” His brother has always been circumspect about the beast in an underground chamber within the school that nearly killed him.

Nizar’s portrait owes him _such_ an explanation.

“Well, it did kill a Muggle-born,” Monty points out. “They expelled a Hufflepuff student for doing it, but all he had was a stupid Acromantula. Myrtle Warren wasn’t killed by one of those, but the staff at Hogwarts and the Ministry won’t say a word about what _did_. I finally managed to overhear someone say that Myrtle had been Petrified, but I can name five creatures off the top of my head that can kill you that way. Was it a curse? Was it a Gaia’s Dragon? The black elves of the north? A basilisk? A cockatrice? A gorgon? A Norwegian troll with a grudge? The Fae?”

Salazar smiles. He doesn’t encounter many who remember Gaia’s dragons, much less the _svartálfar_. “That was more than five.”

Monty lets out an aggrieved sigh. “I think the end of the war was just an excuse. Warren is still about, you see. Myrtle decided to stay on as a ghost in revenge against Hornby for the other girl’s cruelty. The Ministry had to intervene so that Hornby could have a moment’s peace, and now Myrtle can’t leave Hogwarts at all. What I mean is that it’s hard to forget that someone was murdered at your school if you keep having conversations with their ghost.”

“You think Dippet hopes the students will simply forget about the murder if granted a suitable distraction.” Salazar glances at Monty. “You’ve quite the head on your shoulders. Your parents should be proud of you.”

Monty blushes, but keeps his chin up instead of ducking away. “I wasn’t saying it for praise. I could as easily say the opposite, and it’s still true. Headmaster Dippet is very nice. You can tell he likes kids. He was really upset about Myrtle dying—not just for the politics of the situation, but because she was just a fourth-year girl. But trying to just forget doesn’t make anything better.” He shakes his head. “If last year’s Head Boy hadn’t graduated in June, he’d be throwing a right fit about this. He was an orphan, and he wanted to stay in Hogwarts all the time. If they’d closed the school when he was still there…well, I wouldn’t want to get in _that_ one’s way.”

Salazar feels his heart clench in alarm. He doesn’t want this family anywhere near Voldemort. They’ll have to deal with him in horrific fashion far too soon as it is. “Who was Head Boy last year, Monty?”

“A Slytherin named Tom Riddle. Arrogant sort, claimed he was one of Salazar Slytherin’s direct descendants. I think he might’ve hexed people who didn’t believe him because he couldn’t prove it, just claim it.”

“Were you one of those he hexed, Monty?”

“Me?” Monty shrugs. “I didn’t say anything about his heritage. It isn’t my business if it’s true, or if he just wanted something to hold onto because of the orphan bit. I wouldn’t blame him for that, anyway. Besides, I’m the Potter Heir. Slytherins tend not to alienate the Pure-blood Heirs of other Houses, even if they don’t like them.”

“This is your sixth year, yes?” Salazar is almost certain, but he was also unconscious for a month. He’d rather ask and be sure of the answer.

Monty gives him a brief glance before nodding. “Yeah.”

“What classes are you taking?”

“They’re all N.E.W.T. level, but I’m studying Occlumency. At least that one doesn’t drive Mum up a wall,” Monty comments. “They don’t teach Legilimency until next term, and they’re already discussing getting rid of the class as unnecessary. You have to be a Wizarding adult, anyway. Otherwise, I have Potions, Alchemy, Arithmancy, Astronomy, and Defence Against the Dark Arts.”

“Not Charms or Transfiguration?” Salazar asks, suspecting he knows why.

Monty grins. “Mum’s version of both of those is better. Easier, too. I might travel to India one day and take the tests to get accreditation in those subjects, but I’m in no hurry. Why do you want to know about my classes?”

“It’s very difficult to learn about someone if you don’t ask them questions,” Salazar replies. He might also be plotting, but he does that almost as often as breathing.

That very evening, 25th October, is the Somerset tradition of Punkie Night. The festival is so old now that Salazar can’t recall if it was celebrated in Godric’s time, or if the tradition emerged shortly afterwards. Monty asks for Salazar’s assistance in carving jack-o’lanterns, which are made from proper turnips and gourds, not the pumpkins that are growing in popularity—and size.

Henry lights each carved lantern at dusk. Monty promptly forgets that he is a young man of sixteen and runs off to the village of Godric’s Hollow to join the other children, chanting the old rhymes to ask for coins and sweets. Salazar watches until Monty is safely away before frowning. It’s been a very long time since he visited this area of England, but he once knew Godric’s lands quite well. “Where is Saint Andrew’s from here?” he asks Henry.

“That way,” Henry says, pointing north and slightly east. “It’s on the west bank of the Yeo. Why?”

“Curiosity. It’s always nice to know where I am.”

The Fosse Way is to the west. Henry’s home is north of the River Yeo, its rear gardens ending just before any potential floodwaters could do harm to the grounds. Godric’s Hollow is to the north of the manor; the village nestles itself almost exactly between St. Andrew’s and the southern bend of the river above Ilchester. Potter Manor is hidden from non-magical sight to the southern residents of Ilchester and the northern residents of Godric’s Hollow. Somewhere to the northwest in those woods, between village and manor, is a hidden Door.

These particular descendants of Godric do not merely live close to Godric’s Hollow. Their home is in the _exact same place_ where Godric’s family keep once stood.

 _I know a sign when I’m presented with one,_ Salazar thinks, though he feels chilled, regardless. He had yet to deliberately seek out a magical Potter family, thinking it too soon when he had only a single name, yet Henry Potter was sent to Germany just to find Salazar. How much of what has happened in the past two years was _always_ going to happen? How much of this is Salazar, all unknowing, doing exactly what he must in order to regain the brother he so desperately longs for?

A few friends and the remnants of the Potter family gather to celebrate Hallowe’en and Samhain both, which makes Salazar itch to read the water. He finally gives in and does so. Everyone who volunteers for the experience may each ask him one question, and one question only, a tradition he has never veered from. Some seem leery of the idea, while others participate in the Samhain custom with enthusiasm.

Charles shows no interest, but Dorea asks him what became of her brother Marius. Salazar is glad when the water shows her an image of a man with distinctive Black family features in Belgian military dress, directing what looks to be reconstruction efforts. Better a distant, unfamiliar soldier than a tombstone.

Charlotte wants to know if Will is happy. Salazar doesn’t even get the chance to tell her of the limitations before the water’s surface reflects grey mist. “Some things are beyond Sight, and the dead always are,” Salazar tells her gently, “lest you ask specifically to see a corpse. Please do not, by the way.”

She smiles a little at the joke, bouncing baby Samuel on her knee. The infant is already strong enough to sit upright, to hold up his head and look around with his grey eyes. “I suppose I’ve had my question, then.”

“Technically not, as you saw nothing.” Salazar gestures. “Try again. Only the once.”

“Will my Samuel have a _good_ marriage?” Charlotte stresses. She was definitely raised to expect otherwise.

Salazar taps the bowl with his wand and lets the image form, again seeing brown curls and violet eyes before the water shifts to reveal a pair of clasped hands. “Whether or not they romance each other with every rising of the sun, they are, at least, good friends,” he tells her. Charlotte nods, pleased, and wanders off to entertain one of the distant Pure-blood cousins who don’t think the Potters are Blood Traitors. That is a new phrase, and Salazar doesn’t like it. He especially is not fond of the fact that he has no idea where it came from. He left England in 1939 and it did not exist; he returned in 1945 and now finds those words on far too many influential lips.

Monty asks, with the typical curiousness of young men, who he will marry. A succession of images, three differing women, ripple across the water so fast that their individual features cannot be seen. “It looks as if you’ll have a decision to make,” Salazar says. Monty wanders off with a slightly thwarted but thoughtful expression on his face.

Elizabetha is the one to ask not of herself, but to ask if _Salazar_ will be happy in the future. Salazar is taken aback, but the image on the water shows himself, smiling at someone who—he wipes the image away before he can see it, explaining that some things should not be so pre-ordained. Besides, the water did answer her question. He knows his own face, his own eyes. His happiness was genuine.

Helena Black Potter coming to him is a surprise. She sits with the careful precision common to stilted English nobility and regards him with steady grey eyes. “Do you know who I am?”

“I know that you were born to Phineas Nigellas II, the only man to bear that name and have any sense at all,” Salazar answers.

Her lips edge up in a polite smile, but she doesn’t disagree. “Might I ask something of your water-scrying?”

“As long as you do not ask of the dead, then yes.”

Helena nods and then asks as to the health of her parents. It takes Salazar a few minutes to work out the meaning of what he is then shown, as it’s a rather complicated question. “Your father has a bit less than ten years left to him, though I believe he will be hale until the end. Your mother will outlive him by quite a bit. If anything in her home still requires a wand, it might be best to begin arrangements now for a wand to no longer be necessary for the magic to function.”

Helena narrows her eyes. “My mother’s blood status was not what I asked for.”

“I do not actually care as to your mother’s so-called blood status,” Salazar retorts. “What I care about is seeing to it that a woman can continue to dwell in her own home after her husband’s death.”

That earns him a curt nod before Helena rises and departs. Salazar considers upending the silver bowl’s contents over his own head to cool his frustration. Bloody _Blacks_ , for gods’ sake.

While the others are distracted by some long-winded tale voiced by the ancient Potter matriarch, Henry’s unwed great-aunt Isobella, Henry asks Salazar his question in atypically blunt fashion. “Who am I to you?”

The image that appears on the water to answer Henry’s question is of Nizar and Godric—both still young, given that Godric is still insisting upon being beardless. They’re standing together in a way that is comfortable and familiar, just before Nizar nudges Godric’s arm with a smirk. Godric laughs in the silence of the water and wraps his arm around Nizar’s shoulders.

“Who is that?” Henry asks in bafflement, pointing to Godric.

“Are there no portraits within Hogwarts showing her first teachers any longer?”

“The Founders, yes, though—” Henry pauses. “Was that…was that Godric _Gryffindor?_ ”

“It was indeed. Not a surprising thing to see, given that you are one of Godric Gryffindor’s direct descendants. Standing with him was his apprentice, the man who became Hogewáþ’s first named teacher of Defence.”

Henry stares at Salazar. “The man with Godric is the very same man I met in a portrait in your home. The man you named as Nizar, your brother.”

Nine centuries of existence has given Salazar the understanding of how to handle moments like these. He treats them as if they are normal. “Yes.”

“Hogewáþ.” Henry’s gaze turns shrewd. “If I were to ask you your real name, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Salazar nods. “Only if you asked.”

“Then I won’t. I will not force such truths out into the open, strange as they are.” Henry settles back in his chair. “Elizabetha and I saw your ring during your convalescence. We managed to keep it from Monty’s eyes, as I thought you wore it backwards for a reason…especially given how much its crest matches a very old Slytherin emblem in a very old family tapestry.”

“The tapestry was never owned by Godric,” Salazar says. “It was constructed by my niece. When she was much younger, she made a similar one for her father. She must have recognized the ancestor who acquired it from her as part of our family, else Galiena wouldn’t have embedded so much of the family magic into the threads.”

“Nizar’s daughter?” Henry swallows visibly when Salazar nods again. “Well. I suppose that explains a family oddity, one that is kept a close secret. Only my wife knows. Monty is still too young to be let in on that secret, especially as he’s never shown any hint of that particular bit of magic.”

Salazar raises an eyebrow at the prevaricating. “Who was the Parselmouth?”

Henry snorts. “Yes, I suppose it is an easy thing to guess. That would have been my father, Richard. He was so confused as a lad. The family had no idea how such a magical language could have turned up in our lineage, what with our family descended from Godric Gryffindor. Father kept it a secret from all but my mother, myself, my sister Rose, and Charles, for what you certainly know are obvious reasons.”

“Unfortunately, I am indeed well aware of that.” Salazar debates upon asking before deciding he might have no other opportunity. “You’ve rarely spoken of your sister. What happened to her?”

“War.” Henry has a wistful expression on his face, all that remains of old grief. “Her name was Rose Lorraine. She was a year and some months older than myself. When I decided upon politics in Hogwarts after certain Wizengamot-related hints from my father, Rose decided upon healing. We were of age when the Great War began, so both of us volunteered to assist in that massive bloody mess. We all once thought that war to be the last such conflict any of us would ever see. How _arrogant_ we were to believe such things!”

“I once thought it, too, and I have certainly seen enough to know better,” Salazar says.

“Rose died in July 1917, in France. The Kaiser’s men mistakenly attacked a camp dedicated to the newly commissioned Red Cross. Rose would have torn them all apart with her bare hands for endangering her patients, but it was an…an effective attack. I was glad enough to have a body to bring home, to see her properly entombed in the family crypt. There were others killed in that assault who had no such blessing.”

“I am sorry.” Salazar attempts a smile, though wonders if he succeeds. “I did not always get along with my own sister, Estefania, though that we loved each other was never in question. She lived a long and happy life, yet I still miss her very much.”

“My sympathies to you, also.” Henry’s eyes dart around to the others who are wandering about the back garden, many of them focused on feeding the Samhain fire. “Was there truly an argument between our ancient family members, Saul?”

Salazar watches sparks and ash rise up above the bonfire’s orange flame. “So much has become fanciful; so much of our magical history is corrupt legend rather than truth. It was not one argument, but six, and only because he did not wish for me to depart.”

* * * *

Salazar is more than ready to return to his own home on 1st November. The Willow House might host only enchanted portraits, but they worry just the same. He is tempted to ask Elizabetha to allow him to test the Divination gift she claims not to have when, just before he announces his intentions, she asks him to stay for Diwali.

“The entire festival?”

Elizabetha laughs. “No. My family, we called it Little Diwali. We celebrate on Amavasya.”

At least that is a word Salazar still knows. “The new moon. Sunday evening, then?”

“And Monday morning until noon. The beginning of my New Year,” Elizabetha says.

Salazar gives her expression another, more thorough inspection. “They won’t allow Monty to come home for this, will they? This is his first Diwali with you since he began schooling at Hogwarts.”

Elizabetha makes a noise remarkably like an angry cat. “They will not. Hogwarts only grants their students two holidays. The winter holidays most often begin just before the Winter Solstice and end on the Christian Epiphany. They grant the students one week off for Christian Easter, Tuesday through Tuesday, so the students miss none of _those_ holidays.”

“That’s _it?_ ” Good gods, no wonder his little brother had once been so baffled to have so much time free away from lessons and work. “Do they believe themselves to be a British boarding school, or a school for magic?”

“The first one is their primary concern, I believe,” Elizabetha responds in clear annoyance. “It was a surprise to discover how limited our opportunities with Monty were going to be. I was home-schooled, but Henry recalls his time at Hogwarts fondly. It’s Charles who told me that by the time of his attendance, there was no tolerance of other faiths to be had. Students who try to return home for things that are not approved holidays, or family funerals, are not highly favored by the staff.”

“I see.” Only Christian holidays recognized at Hogwarts, and a mere two of them, at that. Godric would be offended by the idea of his religion granting the faiths of others so little respect. Salazar is just frustrated; it is yet another thing in which he _cannot_ meddle, much as he’d prefer otherwise.

Salazar asks permission to use the family Floo. If there is to be a festival celebrated, no matter how small the gathering, he is not prepared to gift things to an entire household.

“ _There_ you are,” Nizar’s portrait greets him after Salazar emerges from the Floo. “Good gods, Sal, what the fuck happened? When Henry came to see to you, he was far more concerned with you than with answering my questions.”

“Oh, right. It was still early August when everything went tits up, wasn’t it?” Salazar sits down in his favorite chair and sinks into cushioning that is accustomed to every angle of his body. He briefly explains the detonation of two more nuclear devices, how long it took to recover from the sense of poisoned earth, and why he will only be in the house for a brief time, though he will return after Diwali.

“The Festival of Lights.” Nizar is quiet for a moment, leaving Salazar to consider what is in his house that could be gifted to a sixth-year Gryffindor, or perhaps what might be found in a magical shop. Not much, he’d wager. Wizarding Britain is participating in rationing alongside the British government, as both are affected by the overall lack of goods in Europe. Gods know how long that sort of cooperation will last, but at least it shows that someone in the Ministry aside from Leonard has a brain in their heads.

“That man, Henry. The one who decided to scoop your unconscious arse off the floor and make off with you.”

Salazar glances up at the portrait. “What of him?”

“You’ve not said, but he’s family, isn’t he?”

“He is not merely family. If I’m right—and I’m almost certain of it by now—Henry Simon Potter is your great-grandfather.” Salazar smiles at the portrait’s baffled look. “His father, Richard, was a Parselmouth. No one aside from close family was ever told such.”

“Bloody fucking hell.” Nizar sits down on the floor of his portrait. “And yet, Henry told you.”

“I told Henry in 1943 that we were distant family. On Samhain, I agreed to read the water using the old tradition of one single question. Henry asked how we were related. The answer that shone upon the water was yourself and Godric, little brother.”

“Oh. Yes, that would be a bit telling, wouldn’t it?” Nizar props up his arm and rests his chin on his hand. “He knows who you really are?”

“Henry hasn’t said my name, but I’m certain he knows,” Salazar replies. “I told him I would grant him my true name if he asked, but he declined to do so.”

“How did he take it?”

“Less surprised than I would have thought, but given how we met, I believe he is wise enough to understand that magicians do not meet by mere circumstance.” Salazar shakes his head. “I’d yet to do anything to find your family other than record the name and lineage of every Potter born from Iolanthe and Ignotus’s descendants, and yet I have the distinct impression that your family is trying its best to adopt me.”

Nizar smiles. “A batch of Gryffindors with Slytherin tendencies? The very idea, Sal.”

“Mm,” Salazar demurs in agreement, but his thoughts have drifted in another direction entirely.

“Come on, _hermano_. What’s the problem now?”

“Riddle,” Salazar replies. “Tom Marvolo Riddle.”

“We knew he would be about, Sal,” Nizar says. “He would have graduated from Hogwarts this past June.”

“Riddle has already made his first two Horcruxes, and I missed it. I was not here.”

“You were where you needed to be,” Nizar’s portrait reminds him. “Besides, what could you have done? If you’d stopped him, you would have changed history, and you know what happened the last time you tried that.”

Salazar grimaces. That had indeed been disastrous. The only reassurance he’d gained from the entire experiment was that his attempt at meddling had not changed her fate. Nizar had even posited that Salazar might’ve caused Jeanne’s fate to match history in the first place.

That had _not_ been as reassuring as Nizar’s portrait meant for it to be.

“We’ll do as we’ve always done, Sal. We’ll wait. Watch. Listen. It isn’t as if we don’t know what his plans are for Wizarding Britain.”

Salazar stares at a bookshelf set against the far wall. Among its tomes is one book that the Ministry would imprison him for, hidden beneath a blend of spells meant to disguise it to all but himself. _Secrets of the Darkest Art_ does not tell one how to make a Horcrux, but it provides every single bit of knowledge needed for one to figure it out for themselves. Monty knows that a copy existed in Hogwarts’ library due to his older friends among the Ravenclaws taking Defence, all of whom were rather offended when the book suddenly vanished from the Restricted Section.

“That’s the problem, little brother,” Salazar murmurs. “I do not think we know nearly as much as we should.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes:  
> JKR just gets progressively worse at maintaining her own stupid canon. She now says Myrtle Warren’s death occurred in June 1943, making the diary the first Horcrux…which doesn’t work when she also says that Tom didn’t kill his family until the summer of his 16th year, which is also 1943 (despite originally saying it happened in 1944, and that the ring was the first Horcrux). JKR says Tom didn’t know he was descended from Salazar Slytherin until he visited Morfin Gaunt and Tom Riddle Senior that summer, and that’s what led him to uncovering and opening the Chamber of Secrets during his sixth year—the same year he asks about Horcruxes, which is 1943-44, not 1942-43, his fifth year. Myrtle has to have thus been murdered in June 1944, or else the very fragile sticks holding up JKR’s clusterfuck timeline just shatter.
> 
> So: Tom finds that Restricted Section book about Horcruxes during his fifth year, 1942-43; Tom discovers he’s Slytherin-descended and the Riddles are murdered summer 1943; the Ring Horcrux is made by Riddle using their deaths based on what that book could tell him before Dumbledore made off with it; Tom starts seeking out the Chamber of Secrets in his sixth year of 1943-44; Tom starts asking Slughorn about Horcruxes that same term because he wants to know if it’s possible to make more than one; Myrtle is murdered with a maddened basilisk June 1944, and her death creates the second Horcrux diary. Also, I screamed a lot trying to get this into believable order, so now you can share in my angry shrieking.
> 
> Canon information regarding these events is gleaned from original printings of The Goblet of Fire & The Half-Blood Prince, respectively.


	7. Burning Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The 20th century is a runaway train with no functional breaks periodically* interrupted by funerals and explosions, but most importantly to Salazar, a certain Potter acquires a girlfriend.
> 
> (*relatively speaking)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flailed at by @norcumii, re-read by me while trying not to faceplant and panic over the fact that I haven't been able to concentrate on writing one of the next chapters in weeks, but that might've been because I hadn't noticed something vital. Possibly. Maybe. (Welcome to the plot bush, except it's actually kudzu vine.)

Salazar feels he has no sooner recovered from the exhaustion of coping with two different European wars occurring at the same time (not to mention three nuclear explosions) when technology changes yet again. The original wireless band is split into amplitude modulation and frequency modulation, and requires he upgrade the bloody wireless. After the pre-war wireless experimentation, television is being sold as a separate device that broadcasts programs in the promised monochromatic black and white.

Despite Nizar’s original advice, Salazar purchases one anyway. He can’t resist the urge to find out what Britain will do with it. Of course, then comes the task of convincing a television to work within the magical confines of the Willow House. The project is a nice distraction from trying to figure out if its possible to acquire a milking goat that doesn’t despise him.

It’s far more difficult than Salazar expected it to be. Magic does not seem to like a television’s necessary mechanical complexity. He purchases several more of the devices after the first one dies a pitiful death, brings them into the house, but doesn’t yet attempt to use them. Salazar instead takes one of the televisions apart, learning of its internal intricacies while studying the science behind the device’s creation.

Another of the televisions, Salazar takes to a landfill. He gives it a great heave into the pit, causing the cathode-ray tube’s vacuum seal to rather messily destroy itself. Salazar ponders the explosion, suspecting that magic may not be so fond of that artificial vacuum, either. It makes him wonder if it would be different, or more difficult, to cast spells in the natural vacuum of outer space.

He has all he needs to convince a television to work in the house. Then he realizes he’s too far distant from London to receive signal, and cheats a bit until he has a clear picture on the screen, black and white with true shades of grey. The television isn’t capable of displaying any color at all, though the play of light through the glass sometimes grants him the illusion of color.

Films that Salazar hasn’t seen since they were first played in the cinema decades ago are broadcast anew on the television, though _The Adventures of Robin Hood_ , the last film he saw before the war began, is hard to watch when it lacks the color that helped make it such a marvel. The old films are joined by the new films slowly being produced, replacing the propaganda reels with fiction once more.

“Now this is something electricity is useful for,” Salazar tells his brother’s portrait. Nizar smirks and reminds Salazar that this is _after_ he convinced a telly to work within the Willow House without exploding. Salazar rolls his eyes and decides that some comments are best ignored.

His brother’s portrait often spends time watching the television from one of the nearby frames, usually with a perplexed look on his face. Sometimes Isis joins Nizar in the same frame, but she isn’t fond of the flickering, moving images.

“What do you think, then?” Salazar asks Nizar’s portrait after they’ve finished watching the televised performance of a play. He thinks he’d much rather see that sort of show in person, but it was an intriguing experience.

“I think I’d managed to forget that people are weird,” Nizar replies, but he doesn’t stop keeping track of the television and its offerings. Salazar likes the idea of animated stories, but the televised news broadcasts leave him frowning. He was trained in Court to recognize such ploys from a very young age. Perhaps it isn’t intentional, but he doesn’t trust these news anchors and their gleaming smiles. Newspapers are bad enough when reporters fail to be impartial. A telly just amplifies that lack of impartiality, but in a way that _humanizes_ it, makes one want to empathize with people who perhaps should not be empathized with at all.

“No, that’s not just you being paranoid. It gets so much worse than this,” Nizar says. Salazar sighs and despairs of humanity ever learning this particular lesson. Cricket might still be one of the most confusing sports in existence, but it’s more soothing to watch than a news broadcast.

The Potters are sometimes guests of the Willow House, though more and more often, Salazar seeks them out, instead. The Willow House is the home he made for himself when Burgos became intolerable, but standing on Godric’s lands again soothes some ancient part of him that has never stopped longing for the company of his friends.

Henry and Elizabetha never breathe a word of Salazar’s true origins. When they ask about that long-ago era, it’s always when Monty is otherwise occupied, or absent entirely. Salazar doesn’t mind their caution, and appreciates how rarely they ask questions, as he also finds his life to be…well…weird.

It’s for the best that none of the Potter family speaks Castellano. Nizar’s portrait goes ballistic when Monty informs him exactly what is being taught in Defence Against the Dark Arts N.E.W.T.-level classes in this decade. Then his brother switches back to English, orders Monty to pull up a chair, sit down, and start taking notes, because they are fixing this nonsense immediately.

“We are?” Monty asks in bafflement. “You’re just a…well, no offence, but you’re just a portrait.”

“I,” Nizar snarls back, “am at least a _well-educated_ portrait. You, however, are not. Chair. Scroll. Quill. Notebook. Pencil. Biro. I do not care as long as you bloody well sit your arse in a chair and listen to me!”

Monty looks to Salazar, who grins. “You’d be wise to do as he suggests. He is quite the teacher. Besides, no magical portrait should be so blithely ignored, their advice so easily discarded. Many of them are most certainly older than you are.”

“Right. That’s…that’s a good point,” Monty admits, worrying at his lower lip and frowning as he finds a chair and the supplies to do as he’s been ordered. Nizar definitely wasn’t asking, though he would have told Monty it was his loss if the young man refused the granted opportunity.

Nizar’s portrait is very much a pristine record of his brother’s teaching habits. He is far more patient with the young ones than adults, and Monty’s seventeenth birthday was a mere two weeks previous. As far as Nizar is concerned, all bets are off.

“He must have been a fascinating teacher,” Henry says in a low voice, listening to Nizar’s portrait rip through years of education. It isn’t nearly as bad as the pathetic level of knowledge that Nizar had at age fifteen, gathered as a student at the Hogwarts that will exist fifty years from now, but there are still several gaps that Salazar finds alarming.

“Yes.” They’re teaching that basilisks are created by a toad hatching a chicken egg, which has Salazar contemplating killing a long line of DADA teachers. He already needs to find a necromancer just to deal with the long line of dead Head Teachers.

“And you? What did you teach? Or did you linger in your Chamber of Secrets instead?” Henry asks with a teasing smile.

“I still have no idea what the bloody hell a Chamber of Secrets is,” Salazar responds, his mood souring at once. Nizar’s portrait still refuses to discuss it, which means that whatever it is will not be pleasant.

“Somehow, I didn’t think so,” Henry admits, raising both eyebrows as Nizar discovers the legal adult clause regarding Legilimency and declares he will be fixing that lack. Monty is too fascinated with the idea of learning Legilimency before his seventh year begins to complain that he didn’t want to do schoolwork during his summer break. He isn’t a natural scholar, or one prone to long bouts of studying, but Monty _is_ a curious man, and sometimes that’s all that is needed. “Well?”

“Potions. Astronomy. Weather Magic. Divination. Languages. Mind Magic—you now call it Legilimency and Occlumency. Earth-Speaking magics to those with the talent. Technically, that included Herbology, but Potions and Herbology were taught together at that time. Herbology was not a recognized magic to be mastered until the 1300s. As we gained instructors, I was able to focus on Potions and Divination. Other Earth-Speakers are rare, but if they turned up, I automatically had an apprentice.”

“When did you sleep?” Henry asks in surprise. “That’s quite the schedule!”

“We didn’t structure classes the same way as is done now. We also believed in the restorative nature of regular holidays.” Salazar shakes his head. “Rowena would be the one to ask that of, as I’m still not convinced she ever slept at all.”

Henry utters a quiet laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind if Monty has children who decide to make a mad dash for Ravenclaw.” He hesitates. “No thoughts about blood purity, then?”

 _Not like this,_ Salazar thinks, but the real explanation would be far too complicated. It would also dredge up memories that he isn’t fond of. “By modern standards, myself and my siblings are Half-bloods.”

“Fanciful tales, then,” Henry says, and Salazar can only nod. Fortunately, that is where that line of inquiry ends.

Salazar is glad of his forest-growth of a vegetable patch by the next summer, even if he has to create a bloody moat to ensure it doesn’t drown. The rain is unceasing, crops across England are lost, and bread joins the already meagre rationing list. He’s glad he was already used to slight meals. He could never stomach much food while in Grindelwald’s company, and the German rationing hit them harder in 1945 than current British rationing due to blatant government corruption. Then winter arrives and tries to freeze everyone off the blasted island. Salazar watches potatoes become a rare rationed good and wonders if the Irish who starved due to an artificially crafted famine are enjoying their belated revenge.

Monty graduates in June 1947 after serving in his seventh year as Head Boy alongside Agnes MacDougal. The now-graduated Head Girl was already dating Robert McGonagall, one of three Scottish magicians from the Highlands. McGonagall seems intent on the priesthood despite his magic; his sister Minerva is hell-bent for the M.L.E.; the youngest brother Malcolm is a firebrand, one who has not yet graduated from Hogwarts.

Nizar speaks fondly of Minerva McGonagall, the only one of the three he knew as a child—Transfiguration teacher, Deputy Headmistress, Head of Gryffindor House, and an Animagus who favored a tabby cat form. “I’d no idea she ever worked for the Ministry,” Nizar says, smiling. “But the M.L.E. does sound like the sort of thing she would do.”

“As a Hit Witch, no less,” Salazar replies. Four hundred years of heavily gendered English is about to drive him mad. They’d made such strides in the magical communities, and then modern English bloody well ruined it. At least Castilian has always been honest in that it is a heavily gendered bastard child of ancient and misogynistic Latin.

“I have absolutely _no_ idea what a Hit Witch is,” Nizar says, “or what they do.”

Salazar sighs. It isn’t his little brother’s fault that his schooling was loathsome. “The ‘Hit’ magicians are the magical equivalent of officers like the Firearms Wing in London. Civil Defence.”

“Basically, you’re telling me that my Head of House was even more dangerous than I thought. Awesome.”

It takes genuine effort to catch a glimpse of young Madam McGonagall. She takes her training very seriously, and that makes her hard to track when her manner of travel and her direction always changes. Salazar approves of her sensible caution.

Finally, he is ten feet away, hiding behind a newspaper spelled to be transparent only from his side. McGonagall has stark black hair that she keeps braided and bound rather than paying attention to current non-magical trends. Her eyes are large, blue, and alert, brightened by an intellect that gleams with fierce intensity. She dresses for the wrong century, but the look suits her so well that when she combines her dress with a robe or a long coat, no one grants her outdated clothing a second glance unless it’s one of appreciation.

Perhaps he labeled the wrong McGonagall as the firebrand. Minerva might be planning to outstrip her younger brother for fiery performance. Biting smile, Scottish wit, and Gaelic brogue—that one will succeed at whatever she sets her mind to.

“You didn’t mention she was beautiful, little brother.”

Nizar’s portrait gives Salazar a blank stare. “Sal, she was a teacher. I didn’t ever look at any of my teachers for courting potential!”

“Anselmet,” Salazar sings in reminder.

“Anselmet doesn’t count! He wasn’t a teacher, _pendejo!_ ” Nizar scowls at him. “Don’t flirt with my Transfiguration teacher. Not because it isn’t weird—which it fucking well _is_ , thanks—but I’m pretty sure her snogging an ancient Slytherin would definitely have left an impression on Hogwarts’ modern history.”

Salazar has to resist the urge to sulk in response. Gods, but Nizar’s portrait read him easily. He is utterly smitten already, and there is nothing that can be done about it. She’ll likely be happily wed with grandchildren by 1995.

It won’t be the first time he’s loved from afar. This time, however, he is all too aware that it will be the _last_ time. There is no daunting pile of long centuries that will grant other chances. This century will no doubt be his final lifetime. He has already devoted too much of it to war, and there are two more wars awaiting him once Tom Marvolo Riddle stands up and declares himself as Lord Voldemort.

Perhaps Salazar has no need to wonder why he agreed to and then kept seeking out the company of the Potter family. He can’t stand the idea of passing the rest of this century in solitude.

“What are you going to do with yourself?” Salazar asks Monty when he returns home from Hogwarts. He couldn’t cope with the idea of going to the grounds of his school, not when he would be so tempted to walk through her doors. He can’t. He knows he can’t. There cannot even be _rumor_ that Salazar Slytherin visited Hogwarts, even if everyone believes that rumor refers to a visiting ghost. Nizar knows of no such thing; thus, it did not and cannot happen.

“I’m not sure. Dad is still happy to stand for the family in the Wizengamot, and to be honest, I don’t really want to deal with that bunch of dunderheads if I don’t need to.” Monty’s brow furrows. “Uni, I suppose, though I admit I’ve no idea what I’d be attending for. I’m not referring to the Pure-blood laziness associated with wealth—I just don’t know where my interests really lie.”

“You are certainly not lazy. Besides, it isn’t as if you’ve a time limit. Try everything a university has to offer,” Salazar suggests. Monty thinks on it for a moment and then nods, the furrow easing. Monty has always been interested in little bits of every sort of subject. Even if he walks away from a university with no degree, he’ll find enjoyment in the experience.

Henry is more tolerant of non-magical technological advances, but none of the Potters are comfortable with the television. Thus, when the television’s small screen broadcasts the 1948 Olympic Games from London, Salazar watches in only in a portrait’s company. To see the games again, in this fashion, is an amazing, bewildering experience.

“I’m glad it survived the war,” Salazar says of the Games. Magical communities never ceased the Greek games at all, which means they’re now a conglomeration of madness that any absinthe-loving author would embrace. At least the non-magical Olympics are sort of sane in comparison. “They do pull their heads out of their arses about other peoples and genders, yes?”

“Uh, I dunno.” Nizar’s portrait has slipped into his native Surrey accent as they listen to the broadcast. “My aunt and uncle weren’t exactly known for their support of sports that weren’t boxing.”

“Stop making me wish to kill people whom I’ve yet to meet, _pendejo_.”

“I think it’s probably a bit late for that.” Nizar is silent for a moment. “You’re plotting. You’ve been plotting something for months. Spill it, Sal.”

“Spill—oh. Tell.” Bloody slang. “Monty was only a year below a certain Myrtle Warren, who died in June of 1944.”

“Oh. Moaning Myrtle.” When Salazar glances up at the portrait, Nizar looks as if he is desperately regretting the new topic of conversation. “What about her?”

“I’d planned on going to the Ministry to find out what, exactly, happened to the poor girl.” Leonard is finally getting his wish and retiring now that the Pure-bloods have become bored of the Minister’s status as a war hero, but he’ll know best how Salazar should go about seeking information.

“You don’t have to do that.” Nizar seems to be bracing himself. “I’ll tell you. I just don’t want to.”

After the tale is done, Salazar feels no need to try to shake the truth from a reticent Ministry. Instead, he wants revenge—and yet he cannot have that, either. Not without confronting Voldemort and causing a complete disaster in the process.

Jalaf is not yet dead, but he may as well be. All Salazar can do is grieve.

* * * *

Salazar is almost certain another atomic device was detonated the same summer of the resumed Olympic Games, but this was different. The rumble of power was so faint, he at first thought he’d imagined it. No poison fire assaulted him afterwards.

“Water,” Salazar mutters, and returns to weeding his overgrown disaster of a vegetable garden. He should have thrown a canvas sheet over it before leaving in 1939, but didn’t think on it, and now he has a forest of vegetables. Dorea and Alexis did their best, and Salazar was able to harvest what he needed in the two previous years. This year he can’t get past the bloody thick vines pretending to be squash plants.

Madam Kezia Violet Longbottom Potter grants him the favor of not dying until both the Games and the faint side-effects from the most recent atomic blast have subsided. Rain is pouring down as she is entombed in the Potter crypt next to her husband Joseph, which matches the mournful air generated by the Potter and Longbottom families as they linger together. Madam Potter’s son Victor and her grandson, Gilbert, are entombed at her side. Salazar watches Helena during the final part of the service, noting that her eyes often settle on the gap waiting for her next to Victor Potter.

 _Please do not commit suicide,_ Salazar thinks in her direction. _I don’t care if it used to be a Black tradition. This family has seen enough funerals this decade._ Then three-year-old Samuel escapes his mother’s grasp and runs directly into Salazar’s leg, distracting him. By the time he has opportunity to look for Helena again, she has already departed.

Salazar is certain of the next detonation when it happens in 1949. Raging fire comes from the east and fells him for nearly a week, though he only loses consciousness for a short while on the first day. A man can get used to anything, it seems, but Salazar would rather they just knock off with it.

What is the point of such testing? Do these scientists really want to see if it’s possible to wipe out all life on earth with their nuclear bombs? Salazar could answer that question for them without any more explosions needed, but he doubts they’ll listen. Humanity’s curiosity is sometimes as much a blessing as it is a curse.

When Salazar visits Potter Manor the following spring for the village’s observation of Walpurgis Night, Henry has scarcely greeted him before he shoves a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ into Salazar’s hands. Salazar grimaces in distaste; the _Prophet_ is the only magical British newspaper to survive the war and the austerity measures, but it’s all too often nothing more than a bloody gossip rag.

“Read it later,” is Henry’s explanation. The next morning, before Salazar concerns himself with Beltane, he does so.

He has no idea why Hepzibah Smith’s murder only rates the second page instead of the first. Murder is usually the _Prophet’s_ favorite thing to gush about, given that it automatically qualifies as a scandal. The elderly lady in question was poisoned, supposedly by her very aged and frail house-elf, who added the poison to her hot cocoa on accident.

Salazar frowns. “A house-elf?” he asks Henry after breakfast.

Henry nods. “It appeared that way, yes. The poor thing forgot what year it was at least four times in the middle of her interrogation. Most of us on the Wizengamot asked for clemency instead of imprisonment, and sent her off to live with Hepzibah’s surviving relatives.”

“This article mentions that her family is claiming thievery as the motive for the murder.”

“Which no one can prove, as the family refuses to admit what was stolen,” Henry replies sourly. “That most likely means they were not supposed to have those particular items in the first place. They didn’t even have a goblin’s insurance plan for items taken in circumstances exactly like these.”

 _Helga’s cup,_ Salazar thinks. He remembers seeing a watery vision of Tom Marvolo Riddle visiting an aging woman in a pink room, his covetous gaze resting on the golden cup she held out for his inspection. That would be one of the stolen items the family does not want to admit to.

These particular Smiths insist that they’re descended directly from Helga. If they tried to legally declare ownership of Helga’s property, it would be researched and discovered that Helga never adopted or bore children at all. They would lose the prestige of their claim, and that means more to them than the murder of their matriarch.

“You believe the theft occurred, but a house-elf wouldn’t steal something they had no need of. You don’t think the elf is guilty at all,” Salazar says.

“Of course not,” Henry scoffs. “Why on earth would a house-elf place poison on a serving tray? House-elf purchases are also monitored by the Ministry, and Hokey never purchased the poison that was used in Hepzibah’s murder. The elf was mentally unwell, but I wouldn’t judge her that far gone. Not unless she was given assistance.”

“Assistance of the sort used to convince others?”

Henry nods. “Hepzibah entertained guests often. The house-elf couldn’t recall who her last visitors were in the week before her death, but she knew that there had been several. However, house-elves cannot testify in trials…”

“So, even if she recalled these names, they would still be judged innocent.” Salazar rolls his eyes. “I hate your Ministry.”

“You live here, too, Saul,” Henry points out.

“And I’m still a citizen of bloody Spain!”

The final week of October and all of November are absolute hell. Salazar can barely eat or drink without sicking up, and loses weight that he couldn’t afford to be without in the first place. Six fucking atomic explosions. He feels as if his feet have burnt off.

When he visits the Potters on the Winter Solstice, Salazar is still limping. The family is distinctly unimpressed. “You should have sent for us,” Elizabetha chastises him after making him sit in the bright light of their sunroom. “A Patronus, a message by Floo. Either, Saul.”

“To be honest? I truly didn’t think of asking for assistance for something that needed only to be endured,” Salazar admits, which earns him a loud scolding in Punjabi. He doesn’t understand the words, but their meaning is clear: Elizabetha thinks him an idiot. Sadly, she is correct.

The customs of the Solstice are observed with the lighting of the candles at dusk. Monty is still young enough that his attention is riveted on the presents that Salazar places under the Potter’s Christmas tree, ready and waiting for Christmas Day. Dorea laughs and shoves her nephew away from the tree before he is tempted to lift his wand and take a look.

There is such a blend of holidays in this household, and yet they all fit together. Salazar is reminded so much of the eccentric blend of holidays observed in Hogewáþ that he nearly breaks down in tears he would have no idea how to explain.

“My apologies for missing Diwali,” Salazar tells Elizabetha, placing a lidded clay jar into her hands. “For Holi, next year, whether I’m available or not.”

Elizabetha removes the lid and lets out a girlish squeal of delight. “Green! Where did you find this?”

“It’s a natural mineral from Russia. Essentially, it’s soil, but I’m told it does amazing things when exposed to water.” Salazar also made certain it wasn’t harvested anywhere near rumored or known bloody nuclear testing sites.

In 1952, Salazar is starting to prepare next year’s vegetable garden to fill out the lack from ongoing rationing when another group of fools is suddenly at it _again._ Falling to the ground and feeling that fire from head to toe helps nothing at all. The burn of it doesn’t end until the second week of June.

Great fucking gods. There is scientific discovery, and there is stupidity!

Elizabetha visits by Floo the week afterwards. “I knew something must be amiss when we heard nothing of you for months,” she says, peering down at him in concern. “You were supposed to send for us if this happened again.”

Salazar groans and pulls a sofa pillow back over his head. Lifting a wand has been entirely beyond him, much less concentrating his strength upon a spell. But for his daily crawling trips to the toilet, he’s been sprawled out on his sofa since he dragged himself in from the garden in April, surviving off of Restoratives. “I’d just prefer that they _stop_ ,” he whines.

“How many of these stupid nuclear devices have they detonated since the end of the war?” Elizabetha asks. She pulls the pillow away from Salazar’s face and replaces it with a hot towel, which makes him attempt to melt into the sofa cushions.

“I’ve lost count.”

“All the gods wept. What do they mean to do, replace Sri Desi’s avatar of Kali?”

Salazar thinks he heard tell of one of the scientists present for that first test in 1945 quoting from the vedas, but that also could have been a hallucination. “I don’t know, but it certainly feels like it.”

Elizabetha uses her wand to capture Salazar and take him back to Potter Manor by Hovering Charm. “You’ll be finishing this convalescence with us, and you won’t argue about it.”

“Nnn,” Salazar manages, but he ran out of energy for words by his third sentence. At least by the time Monty gets home from the magical university he’s attending in Cardiff, Salazar is capable of walking again.

On first October, Henry is able to warn him that the British will be testing their own nuclear device. “They’re doing so over water,” he says to Salazar, who has already dropped his head onto the table in resignation. “That should negate the worst of it, should it not?”

“Usually,” Salazar agrees, but he has a bad feeling about this month.

Who is he trying to fool? Salazar has an ill feeling about this entire fucking decade.

Helena Lavinia Black Potter, she of her precise Pure-blood manners and genuine care for her remaining family, dies three days after Henry’s warning. She is only forty-eight, still young for a magician, but Salazar has seen many times how grief can consume the health and vitality of even the strongest of people. He is glad, at least, that she never gave in to the temptation of tradition. Her death is due to a weakened heart that failed her in the night.

“She tried so hard,” Charlotte murmurs at Salazar’s side, all of them watching as Helena is entombed next to her husband and son. “But we knew it might be soon. She started getting frail this last winter. When no illness accompanied it…she still tried, though. Samuel called her Aunt Helena. She knew he would miss her terribly.”

“She was a good woman,” Salazar replies, and means it. Helena was always polite to him, even if her mannerisms could be cold, but actions betray what words will not.

An unusual amount of Black family members attend Helena’s funeral. Most of them seem upset that Helena is being entombed in the Potter vault rather than the Black family crypt, but Helena would have risen from her own coffin and cursed any of them who dared try to move her from her husband’s side.

Frail Sirius Orion Black I is there, dependent on a rolling frame to walk. He accomplished his publicly declared goal of outliving his nephew Sirius Orion II, Heir to the Black Estate, who died only months ago. If he hoped to also accomplish being named Heir and head of the family in his nephew’s place, he seems to have been mistaken. Sirius II and his wife Hesper considered their own children, grandchild, and great-grandchildren unworthy of the Black inheritance, instead granting that dubious honor to Pollux Black. Pollux falls more closely in line with Sirius II’s insane political views rather than the man who should have inherited both titles, Arcturus Black II, Sirius II’s brother. Truly, it should have been Phineas II, but Phineas Black I was thorough when he legally and magically disowned his second son.

Arcturus II still looks to be mourning his lost wife Lysandra, and it has now been a decade since her death. Given Arcturus’s hollow-eyed appearance, Salazar doesn’t think he’s long for this world, and likely longing for it, too. In that, he is in good company with his nephew Arcturus III, who is also lost in the cloud of grief.

To Sirius Black’s intense displeasure, Arcturus II isn’t the only one of his brother’s remaining children to attend the funeral. Phineas Black II brings his wife, Mary, the very Muggle he was disowned and disinherited for marrying. It’s as if the elder Sirius fully expected that Phineas would leave Helena’s mother _at home_ on the day of her daughter’s funeral.

Salazar has no idea why the old man is also angry at Belvina Black Burke and her spouse Herbert, unless it’s the fact that, like Phineas and Mary, they no longer have Heirs. Their son Herbert Burke II died fighting against Grindelwald after sneaking off to join the war effort while underage. Their daughter Marigold died young of undetermined causes in suspicious circumstances that point to a former suitor, though the British Aurors could never prove the other’s guilt.

Those situations highlight that it is only Arcturus and Lysandra’s three daughters who prosper. Callidora married Harfang Longbottom, and they have two Heirs, Robert and Algernon, who were allowed out of Hogwarts for the day to attend the funeral. The Longbottom twins turned seventeen this year, and look a great deal like their father: tall and a bit gangly, curly-haired and unassuming.

Callidora’s sister Cedrella married Septimus, seventh son of the current Weasley generation, veteran of the European Wizarding War, and one of the family’s three surviving children. They have three young sons together, one still an infant and the other just old enough to toddle after his older brother to play with the two Prewett children. The young ones have no reason to avoid Lucretia and Ignatius’s second child the way the adults blatantly do; Henry Prewett is already suspected of being a Squib. His parents don’t mind in the least, but too many other idiots treat the boy as if he’s contagious.

Upon spying Henry’s older brother Ignatius II, Salazar gets an ill feeling of undeterminable danger. It’s more of a potential than a certainty, but he reminds himself to send a polite warning of that potential to Ignatius’s parents after the service is done.

The youngest sister, Charis, married Caspar Crouch, though rumors are rampant that the marriage has led to nothing but squabbling despite the good health of their young Heir, Caspar Junior. Caspar’s younger and politically minded brother Bartemius married Anna Burke, future mother of one Barty Crouch Junior. For now, Anna serves as pseudo-mother to her orphaned younger siblings, Basil and Augusta. The results are mixed; Basil is now an adult and an avowed Pure-blood elitist, while fifteen-year-old Augusta is rather spectacularly Gryffindor in regards to publicly calling him an idiot. Alas that Basil has support in their eldest sister Miranda. She wed Allenford Selwyn, one of the loudest voices for Pure-blood supremacy in the Wizengamot. Their four children act every inch the worst of Britain’s spoiled, bigoted, and obnoxious Pure-blooded magicians. Salazar is _very_ glad the Selwyns chose not to bring their unpleasant offspring to Helena’s funeral.

Of Sirius II and Hesper Black’s four children, only two attend the funeral, whereas Orion is now under the thumb of his sadistic bride Walburga. She refused to recognize Helena as a “proper Black.” Arcturus Black III still mourns his wife Melania and possibly remains unaware that a funeral is happening at all.

Lucretia Black Prewett was raised by her much saner uncles, and her family attends the funeral in their company. Sirius the elder all but hisses in rage when he sees Regulus and Lycoris Black, who both fought against Grindelwald and have no interest in fathering Heirs. Then Sirius Black possibly suffers a brainstorm when he notices that his estranged sister Iola is in attendance with her Muggle husband, Robert Hitchens, deceased John Morgan’s wife Ella, and their children, Robert and Anna. Ella’s brother Robert and his wife Amber brought their children, Elenora and Philippa, possibly just to spite their great-uncle Sirius. Salazar normally doesn’t approve of using children as spiteful leverage, but all four are old enough to agree to and understand exactly what sort of reaction their presence is causing.

Dorea is unsurprised, if saddened, by the absence of all of her siblings and their offspring. Pollux’s oldest son, Alphard, corresponds with his aunt frequently, but neither he, his brother, or his sister-in-law bestirred themselves from London. Alphard still lives with his parents, and likely didn’t dare their wrath, after they nearly disinherited and disowned him for fighting in the war against Grindelwald. Cygnus and his wife Druella have the thin excuse of Druella’s advanced pregnancy, but it’s far more likely that they’re gladly following their father’s example.

The funeral also reveals the depth of the divide in the Prewett family. Ignatius and Lucretia are the only ones who attend aside from their aging and unwed matriarch, Muriel. There is nothing wrong with the health of her siblings, William and Alfred, but their heads are full of nonsense. William and his wife Isabel want to remain politically neutral in the face of Muriel’s insistence against Pure-blood propaganda. Muriel holds the Wizengamot seat and thus the sway to keep her family on the rails…except that Alfred and his wife Frances are both firmly on the side of Pure-blood superiority, and are still angry that Grindelwald lost the war. William Henry and his wife Geneva are both adhering to his father William’s position of family neutrality, though they all seem to have confused the word neutral with _avoid_.

Salazar resists the urge to roll his eyes during a funeral service. Prewett family politics aren’t as complex and spiteful as Black family politics, but they’re still vastly annoying. He also decides that it’s Henry’s fault he knows far too bloody much about everyone’s sodding offspring.

He later discovers by way of Dorea that Druella gave birth to Dorea’s grandniece on 19th October, a girl named Andromeda Cassiopeia. Salazar thinks that a fine way to balance a family’s loss.

* * * *

The next nuclear explosion occurs on Hallowe’en that year. Salazar goes into his bathroom, sicks up everything he ate that day, and goes to bed. Fuck this. Fuck _all_ of this. Maybe he can swallow a phial of the Draught of Living Death and convince Henry, Elizabetha, Charles, Monty, Charlotte, or Dorea to wake him with the Wiggenweld Antidote after scientific idiots are done bombarding the world with radiation.

Another explosion occurs two weeks later. The idea of taking the Draught to escape this nonsense becomes more and more appealing.

Salazar has no idea what happens in March, April, and May of 1953. He blanked out after the second explosion and does his level best to avoid waking again until it’s over. He doesn’t truly regain conscious awareness until the third week of June, and finds himself in what has quickly become “his” room in the Potter Mansion. Again.

“You’re beginning to resemble a walking skeleton,” Monty says when he comes home from university for the final time on 1st July. He now has a diploma to hang on his wall, along with certifications in Alchemy and Defence Against the Dark Arts, but Monty dabbled in far more than that. “If I bring my girlfriend home, you’re going to terrify her.”

“I can easily be gone from here before that happens,” Salazar mumbles, all but drowning in his mug of coffee. Bless Elizabetha’s entire existence for deciding that coffee and chai should learn to be friends; the milk helps to keep his stomach from rejecting it. “What is her name?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Just try not to die of ill health in the meantime,” Monty says, unimpressed by Salazar volunteering to depart. “Her name is Euphemia Grace Pryce. She’s five years older than I am—I remembered her from Hogwarts when I encountered her at the university in Cardiff. I’d have missed her entirely if she’d gone to uni right after Hogwarts was done, but she waited a while. Lucky me, yes?”

“Very fortunate. How did you find it to teach a class on your own?” Salazar asks. Monty volunteered to be the DADA post’s victim this past term, using the opportunity to fulfil the university’s requirement that Monty find employment in a subject he’s proficient in to earn his degree. The curse Nizar warned Salazar of has been in full swing in regards to fending off long-term Defence instructors since Salazar’s return to England in 1945. He strongly suspects it was Tom Riddle who cursed his school, but he must wait forty-two years before he can do something about it.

“It went well enough, but I don’t wish to do it for the rest of my life. I’ll probably not repeat the experience, though I did decide that I don’t like Albus Dumbledore.”

“Oh?” Salazar gives him a curious look. “Why is that?”

Monty seems to be searching for words, and doesn’t look settled until he finds the right ones. “Albus is ambitious, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just—it’s the way he sticks his nose into every pot he can find to see what’s what. He acts like an upstanding man, yet his sort of ambition doesn’t remind me of what Dad gets up to, Saul. Albus Dumbledore reminds me more of Patrician Lestrange.”

“Given what Patrician Lestrange is like, that is quite the damning opinion of Albus Dumbledore’s character,” Salazar says in a mild voice.

“And no one seems to notice,” Monty replies, understanding at once that Salazar is not disagreeing with him. “They see the defeater of Grindelwald, the master of Transfiguration, the skill, the political savvy…and that’s as far as they look. I don’t understand why he’s so venerated.”

“Leonard is still venerated, even after politics turned against him.” Salazar feels a bit more alert as the coffee works its simple magic. “People like to have heroes, Monty. Sometimes all it takes is one act of greatness, and the idea will follow you all of your days.” He thinks of Nizar and his little brother’s muted, angry frustration that a famous scar was Wizarding Britain’s first and only concern. “There are others who notice that Albus Dumbledore is not as benevolent as he seems, and not all of them are pricks.”

Monty laughs. “No, but it certainly seems as if most of them are. This newly emphasized political movement about blood purity—it worries me.”

“It worries me, also.”

During his convalescence, Salazar missed the funeral of Sirius Black I, who finally did his family the favor of dying at the age of ninety-eight. Dorea tells him that the wake and entombment felt more like a celebration, the Black family having a rare moment of unity in the wake of being rid of someone they mutually despised.

Salazar meets Euphemia during that summer of unceasing atomic bomb blasts. She visits the manor in the company of her younger sister, Eleanora Alice Pryce. Monty brings them to the sunroom where Salazar has taken to lurking, soaking up sunlight until his skin is once again the deep bronze of his youth. This summer has decided him; he’s adding a bloody sunroom to the Willow House.

The Pryce sisters have black hair and the blue-green eyes of the Norse-Gaeils, accompanied by rosy cheeks that make their pale skin appear permanently flushed. Euphemia is shorter; Eleanora is taller. Definitely Welsh, though the English and Welsh both look at Salazar askance when he says there is a visible difference between them. Salazar has started to tentatively blame his peculiar eyesight. It might literally be something only he can see, but when he returned to England in the 1600s, he always, _always_ knew when the one he faced was Welsh or English without a word spoken, and the difference only became more pronounced as time passed.

For all that Cymru was one of the last Brittonic kingdoms of the isle, magical or otherwise, little sign of the black eyes and dark hair of the Brittonic tribes lingers in the Welsh bloodlines. To find the lacking darker browns and stark black eyes of the Britons, it’s best to head for the English Midlands and keep wandering north. Whenever someone with darker skin crops up in Wales, it most often reveals that the family had forgotten roots in in southern Iberia.

It’s the bloody Cornish that give him grief. The southern English, the Cornish, and the Bretons still blend together so well that he doesn’t bother to try to name them unless he hears them speak first. Even then, it’s dodgy, and they’re not even using the _same fucking_ _languages!_

Eleanora is revealed to be the sister who is lacking in manners. The moment introductions are done and Monty departs to fetch tea, Eleanora baldly asks Salazar of his blood status. Euphemia looks horrified by her sister’s rudeness, but Salazar tells Eleanora anyway: hundreds of generations of magicians on his father’s side, and something quite similar on his mother’s side.

Salazar feels no need to inform Eleanora that his mother, her mother, and her grandmother would all have been considered Squibs, if not entirely non-magical. The family magic still passed along their bloodline as it should, else Estefania wouldn’t have been able to cup silver fire within her hands, but explaining such things to modern British magicians is a headache he does not want or need.

“A proper Pure-blood, then,” Eleanora says with a sniff. “You’ll do.”

“I’m so glad to have met with your exacting standards,” Salazar responds in a dismissive drawl. Eleanora’s cheeks gain further color as she recognizes the implied insult. She huffs and departs the sunroom, most likely to have a good sulk in a guestroom upstairs. She is only six years younger than her twenty-eight-year-old sister, but still has the attitude of a spoiled child.

“I am _so_ very sorry,” Euphemia says, but Salazar waves off her apology.

“It was not you who demonstrated poor manners. She will eventually learn that blood only matters when you’re trying to keep a wound from spilling it everywhere.”

Euphemia grimaces. “You sound as if you expect another war.”

Salazar eyes her, reads her body language, and trusts in his instincts and magic. “Why not? You do.”

Euphemia bites her lip before she sits down in the chair next to Salazar. “Our mother was a Grace—Alice Eurydice.” Salazar nods; he recalls the woman’s name mentioned in passing, if not the lady herself. “That’s the reason why my second given name is Grace. Mother wanted to remember her roots, though given the manner in which those roots were rotting even before her death, she might’ve regretted the choice. The Grace family believes that Wizarding Britain is fit only for Pure-bloods, and my sister listened to them when they were spreading that nonsense in Hogwarts. The only reason my sister still speaks to me is because I’ve yet to say a word against her choices. I’ve only asked her to be cautious, though I daresay that wasn’t enough. Eleanora won’t hear a word against the Grace family and ceased speaking to Father because of it. She says in private that he isn’t fit to be a Pure-blooded wizard because he’s Welsh.”

“If she says a Welsh Pure-blooded wizard isn’t fit for Britain while being Welsh herself, then logic and observation are not her primary concerns.” It’s the height of hypocrisy, but Salazar heard such often during the war.

“Not really, no,” Euphemia admits, sighing. “But she’s my sister, so I have to try to help her. It’s just—she wed and moved to Dover the moment she graduated Hogwarts. She married our second cousin, Alfrid Chester Grace, just to be able to rejoin the family ‘properly.’ I have a niece who is already three years old, and I fear for her safety. I’ve heard Alfrid’s rants, not to mention those of his father, and…”

“It’s as if they’ve already forgotten that Wizarding Britain just fought a war against the very fascism they’re spouting,” Salazar finishes, and Euphemia nods in regret. “What is your niece’s name? Why is she not with you?”

“Oh, Eleanora wanted a bit of a _holiday_ from motherhood,” Euphemia responds in obvious irritation. “I was tempted to tell her she deserved the frustration after marrying in a hurry and birthing Euphemia Silvestara at eighteen. She was meant to be using the money that Mother set aside for us to attend university.”

“Yet she still loved you enough to name a child after you,” Salazar observes quietly. Silvestara is an interesting choice for the girl's second name; it isn’t British or Latin, but he stumbled over it often when traveling in India. It makes him wonder if Eleanora had a moment of foresight, but didn’t realize it except to grant her daughter a name that ought to offend her current political sensitivities.

Euphemia bites her lip again. “Our mother was ill often when Eleanora was a child. I was often more of a mother to her than a sister. When Eleanora ran off to Dover, I followed. I’m glad I did, or Eleanora and I would already be at odds.”

“She would be the reason you attended university so late.” Salazar sees that Monty is returning, a tea tray floating sedately in his wake. “Yet you might have come out the better for it.”

Euphemia glances down and blushes. “I might’ve.”

“What did I miss?” Monty asks, gesturing with one finger so the tray settles onto the table. He’s getting better with wandless magic, though only for calm, simple charms. Nizar’s portrait sat through several years of frustration before deciding that he’d be satisfied with that level of wandless skill as long as Monty learned to recall his fallen wand to his hand. That did the trick, and impressed other magicians enough that Dippet was pleased to offer Monty a position at Hogwarts when Monty requested a term of assisting or teaching Alchemy or Defence. “Where is Eleanora?”

“She decided to retire for a bit,” Euphemia answers diplomatically, smiling at Monty. Salazar nods once in polite confirmation. He already likes Euphemia a great deal, and wonders if Monty remembers that her face was one of the three reflected by the water on Samhain years ago.

Euphemia seems to gravitate to Salazar in his apparent state of ill health, and shares tea with him at least once a day—to Eleanora’s utter displeasure. “I did meet Monty at Hogwarts first, though I graduated in 1943 while he was still a third-year, just after that terrible business with Myrtle Warren. I confess I didn’t think a single thing on Monty courting me, not then. We met again when I finally gave up on Eleanora’s fascination with Dover and returned to Cardiff to attend the local magical university. I recognized him at once, and he recalled my name. He was the only face I knew, and vice versa, so we fell to talking, and never really stopped.”

“You’re hoping they wed, aren’t you?” Salazar asks Henry while the grown children are outdoors seated on a blanket, watching the evening fireflies begin to emerge in time with the stars. They’re sharing a sweet dessert wine in the smaller enclosed terrace overlooking the back garden; Elizabetha retired early, but with a look of a magician about to set herself to a task rather than a woman intent upon sleep.

“I certainly am,” Henry replies. “Their bloodlines are fairly well removed from ours, so we don’t risk the inbreeding that is befalling certain other families in Britain.” He smiles. “I hope they’re more successful than Elizabetha and I were. Monty adores children, and I believe Euphemia does, also.”

“You join me so often,” Salazar says to Euphemia during their traditional tea the next day. “I’m not adverse to the company, but I don’t wish you to feel obligated to ignore your hosts.”

“You’re ill. It’s polite.” Euphemia sips at her tea. “And perhaps I’m doing so in solidarity.”

“You do not appear to be ill.”

“Appearances can be deceiving, I’m afraid,” Euphemia responds, rueful. “You recall what I studied at uni, yes?”

“Of course.” Euphemia graduated with certifications in healing and the official title of a Mediwitch, though she has yet to pursue any sort of employment.

“While Monty was teaching at Hogwarts to fulfill his accreditation requirements, I was doing the same at St. Mungo’s,” Euphemia says. “At first, everything went well. Then I realized that I was getting tired, more than I should have been. The residency is meant to keep at a brutal pace, to make certain we could handle any sort of emergency, but the others…they were tired, obviously, but they weren’t dragging along. They could still get by on a proper night’s sleep, whereas I began sleeping for longer and longer lengths of time just to get through the day. I made it through my residency to earn my certifications, but by the final month, my hair was falling out.”

“Good gods.” Salazar refills her tea when he realizes her hands are shaking too badly to manage it herself. “Does anyone know why?”

Euphemia shakes her head. “None. I’ve spent the whole of July regaining my strength, though I’m still sleeping too much during the night. My blood has been tested by magical and Muggle means, and those tests reveal nothing amiss. I wasn’t ill for any known reason, but given similar bouts of exhaustion I experienced in my final years at Hogwarts, I believe it’s something I’ll be living with for a long time yet.”

“I am sorry. You should be able to enjoy the career you spent so long preparing for,” Salazar says.

“I’ve made my peace with it.” Euphemia sniffs and wipes a tear from the corner of her eye before it can fall. “All right, I’ve _mostly_ made my peace with it.”

Salazar regards her quietly, though she regains control of her emotions with the swiftness of one who has no desire to be castigated for having them. He’d best not discover Eleanora to be one of those doing the castigating. “I am a Potions Master in both Britain and Spain. I’ve seen some truly odd ailments in my day. Would you allow me to attempt to help?”

“I’m not certain there is any help to be had, though I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Euphemia muses. “I just worry that I might cure my ailment and promptly lose the ability to bear children.”

“That, I can assure you, would _not_ happen. Not because of me, at any rate,” Salazar replies. “At the very least, let me supply you with Restorative Potions that are far superior to that bloody swill they’re peddling at the apothecaries.”

Euphemia smiles, her good mood largely restored. “Thank you. That I would be glad of, Saul. Now it’s your turn to fess up in trade. What left you in such poor condition that you lounge around in the sunroom, allowing the servants to bring you tea? Monty said it wasn’t his place to say, which is just like an Englishman for you.”

“Mostly it is Elizabetha bringing the tea, though you’ve given her a break from that during your visit,” Salazar replies, smiling. “Do you know what an Elemental Magician is?”

“Absolutely. I’m Welsh, Saul,” Euphemia adds when he looks disbelieving. “We call Myrddin Wyllt one of our own, and we remember more than the Ministry would prefer of his origins and abilities. You’re an Elemental Magician, also?”

“No. Only one of the elements. I’m an Earth-Speaker, and normally, that is a source of strength. It is certainly a connection I derive comfort from. Unfortunately, Muggle scientists got it into their heads to start blasting the earth with atomic weapons, and every time they detonate one that is particularly large…”

“You feel it every time. Oh, I’m so sorry.” Euphemia’s scowl is exceptional in how polite it still seems. “Mister Potter—I mean Harry—did explain the concept to me, but I admit I don’t see the point. The first explosion certainly proved it was possible. What are they doing with the rest?”

“Most likely? They’re now trying to prove who has the biggest britches on the planet,” he says, and Euphemia laughs aloud.


	8. Borne of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Fuck."
> 
> “You can say that again."
> 
> “No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flailed at by @norcumii, who puts up with my meddling <3
> 
> Thank you, everyone, for your comments and awesomeness. Feeding the author means more words happen, but more words mean less time to reply. Just know that I'm reading what you say, paying attention, and sometimes cackling because you lot gave me _ideas._
> 
> Also whoo, bacterial sinus infection! We hates them, Precious, we hates them and we kills it with penicillin! Day 3 of 10 and I'm posting a chapter because it's a nice pick-me-up. *regards chapter* Or maybe a nice falling-down. 
> 
> (Being doofy-sick means this chapter might have some interesting errors, as I've been saying sentences aloud out of order, so typing is questionable. Proceed with potential for amusement and screaming.)

When Eleanora and Euphemia depart Potter Manor—one eagerly, and one with great regret—Salazar takes his leave, as well. He may as well have stayed, though, as another nuclear explosion occurs in August.

This one is so intense that Salazar has only an impression of danger originating from the east before he is knocked to the floor. He can feel power washing through the ground beneath him, seeking the means to expend itself. By some miracle, Salazar doesn’t lose consciousness, but he lies on the floor all night long, soothed by Nizar’s constant reassurances hissed in Parseltongue.

“Fuck,” he says at dawn. He can’t quite move yet, but at least he now remembers how to speak.

“You can say that again,” Nizar mutters.

“No.”

Punkie Night. Samhain. Diwali. Christmas. New Year’s Eve. Salazar spends all of these holidays in the Potter family’s company, and is surprised by how very _normal_ it feels.

“Well, it’s been a full decade since we met,” Elizabetha reminds him. Salazar concedes the point while feeling a bit bewildered that he’s spent ten years in the company of family.

Dorea shrieks like a tea kettle in delight when a postal owl brings her a letter from Belgium on the second day of the new year. Her brother Marius Iolus Black received her attempts at correspondence, and his first letter to her is full of joy and kind words for the younger sister who refuses to forget him.

“How many people did you have to blackmail to find out where to direct an owl?” Salazar asks Charles.

Charles rolls his eyes. “So bloody many. Don’t tell Henry that I forgot to leave certain bad habits behind in Germany.”

“Absolutely not.”

Salazar has champagne with Dorea in London to celebrate when Druella bears another daughter on 1st February 1954. It seems that Druella Rosier Black is not as ridiculously intolerant of her aunt Dorea as Cygnus would prefer, and it’s Druella who rules that particular roost. “What have they named her?”

Dorea beams. “Bellatrix Capella. I think they might be carrying the old naming traditions a bit far, but it’s still a lovely name.”

Salazar has centuries of practice keeping his true thoughts from his face. “It is indeed that,” he agrees, but he knows the name Bellatrix. Given what her father and grandparents are like, Salazar suspects she may be the future Bellatrix Lestrange, destined to be locked away in Azkaban.

In March 1954, someone mucks it up badly enough that the public not only pays attention, they get angry. A nuclear test over the Bikini Atoll goes wrong in that it goes far too _right_ ; the radioactive fallout from the massive blast drifts around the globe. Salazar learns of it when the test’s secrecy unravels, in part due to the deaths the explosion caused. It’s a mixed blessing that the bomb was detonated over water. Thus, Salazar was aware of it, but it didn’t burn with the screaming pain of the earth. It’s the radioactive fallout that infuriates him.

“ _It’s unreasonable to make such a big deal over the death of a fisherman,_ ” Nizar’s portrait quotes when that particular bit of shit is broadcasted on the evening news. “Wow. What a dick.”

“That is too mild a term for the sort of man who would speak those words, _hermanito_.”

There are several more water detonations, but the results are quiet compared to what Salazar has recently endured. Monty and Euphemia announce their engagement in April and begin to make plans to wed on the Autumnal Solstice. Salazar manages to prepare his vegetable garden and his herb beds for the year without falling on his face.

Euphemia writes a separate letter to inform him that his Restorative Potions do seem to help, though she still tires if she is too active for too long during the day. She’s frustrated, though she doesn’t say it; she fears she is being judged as lazy. Salazar would like to solve her problem and make the Restorative Potions unnecessary, but he’s baffled by the nature of Euphemia’s illness. He’s not certain if even Helga would know what to do.

Early September of that year lands Salazar on the ground again, unexpectedly retching into the grass just outside Godric’s Hollow. More poisonous heat is flowing through the earth from the east, which means the bloody Soviets are at it again.

Salazar is helped to his feet by one of the villagers, who are now quite used to seeing his face. They guide him to a local pub to recover. Salazar thanks them afterwards, for the stout in particular, and nearly splinches himself into several pieces when he uses Desplazarse to return home.

“Are you pissed?” Nizar’s portrait asks as Salazar stumbles past.

Salazar makes an incoherent sound of protest. Fuck this. He drops into his own bed and sleeps through the next day.

After that, his luck seems to improve again, or someone in charge of all of these detonations grows a sodding brain. He is capable of standing with those attending Monty and Euphemia’s wedding on the Equinox and not attract attention, as he no longer resembles a man in the throes of a terrible illness. Saul Luiz is simply an old friend of Henry’s from The War. He’s a bit thin after too many bloody atomic bomb detonations stacked onto years of rationed meals, but otherwise possesses normal hazel eyes and very dark brown hair, though he stopped using dye to hide the silver shortly after returning to England.

Euphemia is resplendent in a white gown that must be family heirloom, as he saw brides wearing gowns of that style in the late 1800s. Her mother Alice died in 1948, but her father, grizzled Gwydion Pryce, travels from Cardiff in order to walk his daughter down the aisle to where the groom and his man are waiting. Onyx Rothschild is a former Ravenclaw classmate of Monty’s at Hogwarts and an interesting choice, but he swiftly proved that he’s nothing like his parents…or his siblings, for that matter. Onyx’s aunt, Amber Rothschild Hitchens, also approves of him, whereas her brother Obsidian she would prefer to Transfigure into rock and cast into the Channel.

Monty’s hair refuses to behave itself, but he looks tall and fine in his black robes, and thus the state of his hair is ignored as he accepts Euphemia’s hand. The service conducted by an ordained magician is blended Christian and Hindi. The marriage vows are spoken with honest love and thus sound like living poetry. The exchange of rings leave an amusing number of their attending guests in tears.

“How old were you when you decided to conveniently stop aging?” Henry asks him in an undertone as they applaud the bride and groom’s enthusiastic kiss.

“Seventy-three,” Salazar replies.

“You look to be several years younger than myself,” Henry murmurs. “You lucky bastard.”

“My knees stridently disagree with you.”

Henry chuckles. “They’re in good company, believe me.”

Charles all but charges forward to have the honor of offering his congratulations before anyone else, which pleases Euphemia’s Welsh upbringing. It also helps to offset the fact that Eleanora refused to attend her sister’s wedding.

Rationing has finally been ended on all foodstuffs, but market shelves and carts still tend to be barren. Salazar’s gift to the newly wedded couple is a cheat: he traveled vast distances by Desplazarse, collecting goods and supplies from countries that are recovering faster from World War II than Britain. The Potter family’s servants are thus able give Euphemia and Monty what would otherwise have been impossible: the tiered wedding cake that has become traditional, along with a small selection of hors d’oeuvres for their guests.

There is muttering among some of those in attendance that the Potters have reduced themselves to black market purchases, just like any other family of ill breeding. That is an opinion of which Salazar is happy to correct them. _He_ is the one who provided this supposed excess, and if they wish to discuss it further, he has a wand and a great deal of time on his hands.

Salazar almost thinks Abraxus Malfoy is going to take him up on the offer of a duel before the man demurs and apologizes to Henry for what he implied about the family’s morals. Salazar is a bit disappointed. The new babe named Lucius cradled in Delphina Crabbe Malfoy’s arms could stand to have a father with more brains in his head. It’s unspoken but common knowledge that the Malfoy table, among others, has been stocked by black market foodstuffs since rationing began. Thus, not only is Abraxus Malfoy a hypocrite, he is also a fool who insulted his own family by not thinking more carefully upon the wording of his insult.

He misses Nizar fiercely in that moment. Saul Luiz’s persona outside of war and work was deliberately crafted to be a bit less like himself, but Nizar wouldn’t have passed on the opportunity to use Abraxus’s own words for a fierce and elegant verbal slaying.

The guests from the Wizengamot who were invited out of courtesy leave first, but not without sampling the richest food most of them have seen in years. Bloody Pure-blooded ideologically bigoted vultures. Salazar is not sorry to see them go, and won’t mourn overly much if Voldemort’s war sees them dead.

Those who are friends or family rather than mere Wizengamot acquaintances remain longer. Callidora made off with Dorea at some unknown point, while Harfang Longbottom kidnaps Henry for a potential scheme regarding the Wizengamot that Salazar would rather not know about. Their adult twins are glad to converse with anyone who holds still long enough; Robert Longbottom talks happily about how he is courting Augusta Burke, who could not attend due to her current term at Hogwarts, while Algernon talks happily about toads. Septimus and Cedrella’s boys are now all three capable of running about underfoot, though Bilius spends most of his time with Ignatius Prewett II and Sam Potter, as they’re of an age—much to the displeasure of younger Arthur and Ignatius Weasley.

Isobella Potter is now one hundred forty years old, still hale and mentally sound. Salazar is impressed, by her longevity, as most British magicians haven’t been capable of a magician’s proper lifespan in the last two centuries. Olivia Potter Sinistra toasts the health of the family matriarch and then insists that, widowed or not, Olivia is going to outlive her, which earns quite a bit of appreciative laughter.

Belvina and Herbert Burke wait until all of the marriage speeches and toasts are done before announcing that Belvina is pregnant, whereupon she is swarmed by Charlotte, Cedrella, Lucretia, Callidora, and Dorea to be embraced. Stately Iola Black Hitchens is the first to offer far more formal congratulations to her niece. The rest of her extended family calls for a blessing on the mother-to-be, which Salazar thinks a wise idea. Belvina is sixty-eight years of age. A pregnancy in those final years of magical possibility can either endanger or invigorate.

Monty and Euphemia don’t remain in Potter Manor after their marriage, but move into the cottage tucked into a little plot of land on Old Oak Row in Godric’s Hollow. “That’s the last of the old Potter homesteads, then?” Salazar asks, as he hadn’t yet seen it. It’s a sturdy two-storey dwelling, definitely mindful of the 1400s on the outside, but with a proper roof and new glass in the diamond-pane windows. The home is decked out with white ribbons tied onto the garden walls and along the first-floor windows, gifts from the villagers who welcomed the newlyweds.

“It is,” Henry answers. “We took the trouble to modernize it a bit before the wedding. There were some repairs that were long overdue. Charles and Dorea dwelled in it last before choosing to live in Dorea’s grudgingly granted inheritance from Elladora Black.” Salazar nods; he’s visited the townhouse in Kensington a few times. Dorea informed him on his first visit that her inherited home is almost the polar opposite of the home she grew up in. Salazar had gazed at his bright, airy, cheerful surroundings and wondered why Alphard couldn’t be arsed to move the fuck out of what must be an unimaginably foul house.

“Why move out of the manor at all?” Salazar asks. “Aside from the potential for sleepless nights due to a newly wedded couple’s shenanigans.”

“A tradition, one that is probably as old as the cottage,” Henry replies, smiling. “Myself and Elizabetha did the same when we were first married. The newest Potter couple of our direct line to be wed dwells in the cottage for a time, usually until our first children are born. It’s a way of letting a newly wedded couple figure out how to be themselves without the rest of the family trying to dictate how their marriage should work, but it also reminds the village that Potters dwell here, and have done so for at least seven centuries. It keeps the family from being forgotten by the village’s non-magical residents, at least.”

Salazar slowly nods. “I think that a fine tradition,” he says, because the roots of his family have been forgotten by all except himself and Nizar. Godric and Sedemai’s origins are lost but for the folklore regarding this village, and the knowledge that lurks in his own mind. Bavaria and Britain both forgot that Rowena was from a distant duchy named Raven’s Claw, and now think her to be Scottish. Helga’s origins are so historically warped that Wizarding Britain believes she was nothing more than a simple herbal healer from Wales, never mind that Wales did not yet exist during her lifetime.

From what he’s heard from recently graduated Hogwarts students like Monty, Euphemia, and the Longbottom twins, Salazar is himself now said to be from Ireland, which is _hilarious_. He can only think that the legend of the sainted Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland must be the cause, given Wizarding Britain's gleeful vilification of his character.

Not long after the wedding, Salazar feels the burning of poisoned earth, but it isn’t coming from east or west. This is from the south, possibly in Australia, which leaves him desiring to walk into 10 Downing and introduce several dozen policymakers into experiencing life without bollocks. They’re saved from his wrath, alas, as Salazar is too busy sicking up on a daily basis to wave his wand at anyone.

Then Lucretia and Ignatius Prewett’s eldest son, Ignatius II, dies. It’s so unexpected that even Salazar is stunned. His divinatory instincts had not hinted that an _illness_ would fell the poor child, let alone the worst case of Dragon Pox seen on this isle in three centuries. 1954 has been a bad year for the sickness, but almost everyone recovered without difficulty. Ignatius’s parents took him to St. Mungo’s at the very first hint of the illness the evening of 18th November, and by morning they’d lost him.

“It’s not fair!” Lucretia spits in wretched, bitter grief, watching as her son’s coffin is entombed in the Prewett vault. She’s holding onto seven-year-old Henry so tightly that he begins squirming to get away. “It’s not fair.”

“No. It isn’t,” Salazar agrees quietly, gently pulling Henry free to help with his escape. Lucretia then grasps onto him and sobs into Salazar’s shoulder while Henry runs for his father, who looks to still be in shock. The whole of the family is utterly gutted by this loss, one of the few things to unite the Prewetts in years.

Lucretia’s uncles (except Orion) and her father attend the service, as do her aunts with their spouses and children. Once again, it’s Pollux, Cassiopeia, and Walburga who set the tone for that part of the family, and ignore Lucretia entirely despite her valid marriage to a “proper” Pure-blood. However, Alphard dares their anger by attending the service. It grants Salazar the first conversation he’s had with the man since the conclusion of the European Wizarding War.

Ignatius Senior’s parents, Alfred and Frances, also do not attend. Salazar sends them an anonymous and petty curse via Owl Post, the very least he’d like to offer to those odious twats for not attending their grandson’s funeral.

The funeral service is his last clear memory of 1954. The rest of the 1950s seem to pass in a blurry haze of pain, fire, and exhaustion. There are countless nuclear explosions: on the ground, over the ground, underground. Over water. In the air. Possibly even in bloody outer space; he fucking well wouldn’t put it past any of them at this point.

It isn’t a good decade to be an Elemental Magician of any sort. Not even a Fire Speaker would be able to keep up with this shit.

1957 is particularly foul. Everything feels poisoned unto death, and still the world acts as if nothing at all has changed. Before Salazar can even contemplate recovery, something goes wrong on 10th October on the northwest coast of England. He feels the Windscale radioactive fires as they burn, so much closer than any other bomb or test. It makes him want to drink himself into a stupor. With nothing much to stop him, Salazar does exactly that.

There is radioactive fallout across the UK, and he doesn’t need a sodding news broadcast to tell him so. Salazar has to magically cleanse the earth around the Willow House when that fallout settles into the soil, and he feels like utter hell while doing so.

Elizabetha, Monty, Euphemia, and Dorea have afternoon tea with him on a day and month he can’t name over a meal he can’t recall. At least he remembers their company, and the information they grant him—or at least what they remind him of, as he can’t recall reading of these things in the newspaper, nor does he know what his Owl Post contained. Someone could have poisoned him by mail and Salazar is all but certain he wouldn’t have noticed.

It seems 1955 was the year for babies. Both of John Morgan’s children have wed, as have his nieces. Elenora wed a woman named Samantha, and the two managed to have a daughter, Iola Amber, in record time—and have been granted the right to use Rothschild as the baby’s surname by Amber Rothschild Hitchens. John’s daughter Anna wed an Egyptian magician and now lives with him in Cairo.

Caspar Crouch Junior gained a brother named Charles in 1955. Elizabetha spent time in Caspar Junior’s company and declared she has never met a more arrogant toddler in all her years. Lucretia’s husband Ignatius now has fraternal twin siblings, Geoffrey and Monica Prewett. Dorea’s cousin Belvina gave birth to a healthy boy in 1955, just days after the passing of Phineas Black II. In honor of her brother, Belvina named the child Phineas Nigellus Burke.

The new parents then moved into the countryside Black estate now owned by Phineas II’s Muggle widow, Mary—much to the uproar of every annoying Black, which just so happens to include the loud one holding a Wizengamot seat. Pollux Black tried to convince the Wizengamot to pass a law that forbade Muggles from inheriting Wizarding property, no matter the legal documents or intent of the decedent, or the relationship of the one standing to inherit to the deceased. The law failed to pass, but by a disturbingly narrow vote.

Druella Black gave birth to a third child the same summer Phineas Burke was born, a daughter named Narcissa Theia. Salazar hasn’t the self-control he used in 1954 upon learning of Bellatrix Black. He plants his face on the table and tells the others that they’d best be fond of having young Lucius Malfoy as an in-law.

“Salazar, your Divination is so often useful, but in this case, I hope that you’re wrong,” Monty says. Salazar winces, because that wasn’t Divination. That is a fact that has yet to be, knowledge that his little brother’s portrait retrieved from a distant memory of a Quidditch World Cup game that will take place in August 1994.

At least the assumption of Divination saves him from any awkward explanations. Salazar wouldn’t have the thoughts for that sort of conversation, either. It’s difficult enough to keep track of all of these names, these marriages and births of those he considers family or ally or enemy, as every single one of them will soon find themselves living in the midst of a magical war.

The morning of 8th November, Salazar drops a kitchen knife from an unexpected nuclear tremor. He hisses out pained breaths and mixed swearing when the blade embeds itself in the top of his left foot.

Fuck 1957. The only thing he likes about this year is the rising popularity of denims and leather jackets as acceptable casual clothing.

He has vague memories of watching telly evolve through the latter half of the 1950s: variety shows, situational comedies, hosted shows, televised concerts, more storied programs, and more films. He can’t recall any of it afterwards. Nizar tells him that except for a few historically relevant bits, he didn’t miss much. Salazar translates that to mean “exceptionally dull,” though they both enjoy a program called “The Sky at Night.” What Salazar can remember of it, anyway.

Salazar does like the emerging music style of rock and roll, which is often a blend of many older types of music arranged in new and interesting ways. He hears the influence of the composers who are now considered “classical” as well as jazz and blues from the United States. There is folk song influence from both sides of the pond, making him wonder when it will occur to all these young faces that more instruments exist aside from guitar, bass, and drums.

He awakens one morning in June 1959 from old nightmares to realize that he no longer seems to be suffering from dull, hazy lethargy. The Earth has gone quiet in regards to radioactive poisoning…or perhaps he’s finally grown used to it. As much as he’d rather the world’s governments stop spreading radioactivity everywhere, he’ll take that adjustment and be glad of it. One country has no sooner stopped their detonations when another country begins it again. Gods take it, he has to be able to bloody _function_ for the rest of this century!

Despite the continued quiet, Salazar remains paranoid for the rest of the year. He also continues to makes certain he carries all of his kitchen knives well away from his feet.

Arcturus Black II dies in October that year at the age of seventy-five. Salazar is amazed he managed to live as long as he did when his health was already visibly failing in 1954. Regulus Black dies only weeks later at age fifty-three. Salazar, Dorea, Lucretia, and everyone with a functional brain suspects murder, most likely plotted out by Walburga, Cygnus, or Cassiopeia after Pollux declared that only a _son_ of the House of Black, one bearing the family name, will inherit the titles, the wealth, and the Wizengamot seat upon Pollux’s death. Walburga and Orion do not yet have children. Druella and Cygnus have only daughters. Phineas Burke is the child of parents who disdain Pollux’s beliefs, and isn’t of a mind to change his name. Alphard Black became ineligible to inherit the title of Head of the Family the moment he stood against Grindelwald. Unless more children are born, the only eligible male Blacks remaining are Arcturus Black III and Orion Black—and Orion has yet to prove he’s capable of fathering heirs. Lucretia’s uncle Lycoris was born female and is also disqualified in Pollux’s eyes, but not in the eyes of the Wizengamot. If Lycoris tries to make a claim for his family’s Seat, Pollux will have a fight on his hands.

As if the decade didn’t think it had done enough damage, Euphemia’s father dies on 1st December at the age of one hundred three. Salazar pulls the wreck of himself together, casts a glamor that fools everyone except Elizabetha, who always cheats. He goes to the funeral ready to hex someone to the gods’ own halls and back again if they so much as look at Euphemia incorrectly.

When they arrive in Old Wizarding Powys, it’s to discover a vastly underattended funeral. Eleanora and her family aren’t present, but Euphemia didn’t expect anything less from her estranged sister. There is only one other Grace in attendance, Euphemia’s aunt. Anna Grace Pryce is wed to old and frail Lleu Pryce, Gwydion’s first cousin.

“Where is everyone else?” Euphemia asks her aunt and uncle, who are the only guests not avoiding Euphemia in extremely polite fashion. It’s as if the lot of them expect Eleanora’s beliefs about blood purity to be bloody contagious.

“My granddaughter is getting married. Today. In Ireland,” Anna Pryce replies, her entire being touched by grieving regret. “The wedding, the guests, the venue—those aren’t easy things to change, and so many of those involved had already left for Ireland before Gwydion died. I don’t blame them for not wanting to cancel the whole of it, but I refused to let my husband stand at his cousin’s graveside alone. The bride understands why I can’t be there, but my daughter is in such a foul mood over the _timing_ of it all.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re both here,” Euphemia says. Her two decent family members smile and welcome her home. Salazar will not be hexing those two, at least. As far as his opinion matters, the lack of Pryces and their magnificent ability to hold a grudge against anyone from the Grace side of the family is a blessing for Euphemia, who can now see through her father’s funeral without enduring foul behavior.

Monty rests his arm over Euphemia’s shoulders when the service is done. “Are you all right, love?”

“Oh—oh, yes, I’m fine. Sorry, I was distracted. The baby’s kicking,” she replies, smiling.

Salazar jerks his head around from his curious perusal of magical gravestones. “Baby?”

“Quiet!” Monty yelps. “You don’t tell people these things!”

“Rubbish,” Henry grumbles. “That’s fear talking, not a real tradition to concern yourselves with.”

“Excuse me; I’ll be as paranoid as I like, Dad.”

“Baby?” Salazar repeats, hoping for something a bit more coherent.

Elizabetha takes him by the arm. “Due in March,” she explains. “I will have a grandchild.”

“You most certainly will,” Salazar agrees, trying to ignore the churning in his gut. Euphemia is pregnant with James Potter, an event he almost missed entirely. He’s still so gods-fucking fatigued he didn’t even notice she was pregnant!

“It’s a boy,” Salazar says in a low voice, so the others won’t hear.

Elizabetha smiles. “I know.”

* * * *

By January 1960, Salazar knows his lack of further illness must be some form of adjustment. He can still sense that someone is setting off atomic bombs, this time on the northern end of the African continent, but it’s heat beneath his feet, not fire.

That fire is coming from Algeria. What the bloody fuck did Algeria ever do to anyone?

“Not as bad?” Nizar’s portrait asks when he finds Salazar deep into a bottle of vodka that evening.

“Not yet, at least,” Salazar grumbles. “At least I’m well enough to be able to indulge.” Then he frowns at the telly. “What is this about sending men into space?”

“They’ve been discussing it since they first figured out how to send satellites into orbit a couple of years ago. You, er…were not doing so well at the time,” Nizar replies.

“Is this…this is real? They’re truly attempting to do this?”

“It’s real, they’re truly attempting to do this, and—you know what? We’ll discuss this again when you’re sober, else you’d remember the bit about the satellites in regards to a certain crafted map,” Nizar says.

“Right,” Salazar agrees, distracted by wondering what _else_ he missed while trying to survive the latter half of the 1950s with his sanity intact. He wonders how many conversations he had that he doesn’t remember at all. Euphemia is pregnant and her father died before he could meet his grandchild; Salazar can genuinely claim to remember that. Otherwise, he has nothing but dream-like impressions of faces in his house. Fuck, he hopes he wrote down everything important.

The realization strikes him the next day, around five in the morning. “Satellites!” he yells. “Bloody overhead satellite photography to capture the whole of the Earth!”

“Yep!” the portrait agrees cheerfully from down the hall.

“THAT IS FUCKING AMAZING, LITTLE BROTHER!”

“You haven’t seen anything yet, _hermano_.”

Henry invites Salazar over for a celebratory glass of wine (or perhaps a dozen glasses) when Euphemia and Monty’s child is born on 27th March. “They had a devil of a time getting to this point, but that was a healthy child I held this morning,” Henry tells Salazar after the first toast, meant to celebrate the health of babe and mother before any other words are spoken. “Elizabetha says his birth star is Uttara Bhadrapada.”

Salazar has to think on that one for a few minutes to recall even the basics. “Overseen by Ahir Budhnya, the serpent guardian.”

Henry gives him a wry look. “Do I have another Parselmouth in the family, Saul?”

“Ask me again in six months,” Salazar says, because he has no idea what Nizar’s father will be capable of. “We always tend to hiss before words tumble out. What does Elizabetha think?”

“She believes my grandson will be a good man with a short temper, but that describes almost every Potter ever born.”

Salazar hides a smile. His brother fits that description very well. “What do you think they will name him?” he asks, curious as to how James Potter earned his name.

“They’ve decided already. The two cheeky buggers didn’t tell me until they were certain the baby would be a boy.” In that moment, Henry has the bright eyes and buoyant energy of a much younger man. “James Henry Potter. Monty and Euphemia wanted to name him after the uncle that neither of us got to meet, as my uncle James did before I was born, but as to his second name? A man never knows if he’s rated well enough to earn such an honor until after it happens.”

“To my eyes, you rated the honor in World War II,” Salazar says quietly. “You’ve most certainly earned it by now.” By 31st July 1980, he’ll have earned it twice over.

After James’s birth, it’s like a dam waiting to break finally bursts. Voldemort is suddenly a public figure in Wizarding Britain with supporters behind him. Salazar knew that Tom Riddle was back in England, like an itch on the back of his hand that couldn’t be soothed, but Voldemort kept his presence a secret until he’d already built up a decent following of idiots. None are publicly calling themselves Death Eaters yet, preferring to dub followers of their blood purity cause the Knights of Walpurgis. The choice causes Salazar to seethe for days. That they would corrupt that holiday is an insult to Rowena and her Bavarian roots, an insult to Godric and anyone of his faith. It also casts poison upon Beltane, which any magician with a working brain should find appalling. The holiday exists for a reason. It is a _holy day_ for a _bloody reason!_

Voldemort already has “patrons” in the Lestranges, the Avery family, the Burkes, the Selwyns, the Rosiers, the Graces, the Carrows, and far too many of the Protestant Rothschilds. Salazar suspects the Malfoys, Crabbes, Goyles, Frobishers, Notts, Travers, Macnairs, and the Rowles, but those families are wisely not voicing their support in public spaces. It’s the first lot that is the most trouble, anyway. Much as Abraxus Malfoy and Augustine Travers would deny it, theirs are not the deepest coffers in Wizarding Britain. Voldemort’s public supporters are the ones who hold the wealth to speak of bigotry and genocide in public without fear of reprisal. The Ministry won’t touch them, fearing the loss of the substantial family _donations_ that fuel the Ministry of Magic. Worse, they’ve broken no laws save that of having no human decency.

That same wealth gains Voldemort a voice beyond that of Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley. Voldemort’s speeches always make the Wizarding Wireless, and most of what Salazar hears turns his stomach. “He puts such a sweet spin on genocide. You would think British magicians would not so soon forget what Nazi Germany did to its own citizens.”

“Pfft. They haven’t forgotten. Voldemort is attracting the idiots who’ve _always_ thought this way, Sal. They just didn’t have a reason to be public about it. Voldemort is giving them that reason.” Nizar’s portrait stalks out of his frame before Voldemort’s latest speech can end. Salazar realizes he should have turned off the radio and done the same, for he spends the rest of the night in a foul mood.

He had no idea Voldemort began his career so early, not to mention his collecting of sycophants. “Was this not in your history?” Salazar asks Nizar’s portrait.

Nizar shrugs. “Not in so many specific words, no. It’s definitely not mentioned in any book I recall reading. Voldemort’s rise to power wasn’t exactly a direct correlation to Hogwarts’ history, and that book was written well before anyone knew Tom Riddle would be a problem, anyway.” He hesitates for a moment. “What does he look like?”

“Voldemort is a well-dressed man of thirty-three, and is often commented upon as being quite handsome. None of his observers, whether they agree with him or scorn him, seem capable of seeing the rot of his soul through his blinding charisma. They also do not notice that the vitality a magician his age should have is lacking. Voldemort speaks as if he believes everything he says, and they in turn believe _him_.” Salazar ignores a prickling, cold chill of foreboding. He already knows exactly how bad things are going to become, else his brother wouldn’t have been an orphan. “He looks quite a bit like a Gaunt from the time before their inbreeding destroyed the family, though he also resembles his non-magical father. And…and he has Cadmus’s eyes.”

“Cadmus Peverell deserved to have better quality descendants than this.”

Watching Voldemort speak, watching the crowds around his Transfigured platform grow larger each time, is like watching Nazi Germany form all over again. Salazar makes a stockpile of anti-nausea potions, because some of the faces he sees in those crowds once fought against Grindelwald. Now they listen to the same sort of words from a worse sort of man.

James Potter is not a Parselmouth. All of the babble that falls from his lips as he grows is that of an infant learning the shapes and sounds of spoken human words. At six months of age, his birth-blue eyes are turning colors and will eventually be some variant of hazel, given the greens and golds Salazar is beginning to pick out. James’s hair is black, his skin a faint bronze with pink undertones that make him look like a pale-skinned child who’s spent a bit of time in the sun. It’s quite obvious he takes after his grandmother, which includes her hair’s untamable, unruly curls.

“And that will be where you get it from, little brother,” Salazar whispers over the infant’s crib. Not that Nizar had wanted to keep that uncontrollable black hair, but it’s a bit of a relief to finally see incontrovertible evidence of its origins. Great-grandmother, grandfather, father, son. A line that will remain unbroken until Voldemort has waged his war.

Salazar does not yet know what to do about the war to come. He has become attached to these distant members of his family, yet they are destined to die, just like so many others.

“My little brother once asked me to try to save his family, if it was possible,” Salazar says to James, who coos and claps his hands when Salazar picks up a stuffed hippogriff for the baby to hold in his tiny hands. “I have ideas, I’ll confess, but accomplishing them? That remains a mystery, little one.”

There is one place Salazar can start, but he cannot do so right now. He’ll not ruin this family’s happiness regarding the baby until infancy has been left far behind.

Time passes quickly. James has his first birthday, and mauls a tiny cake into oblivion with his chubby fists. His eyes are now green and brown, with spikes of gold and yellow; the only thing keeping them from being true to the hazel palette is the lack of blue. He has also shown his first signs of accidental magic, all of it humorous and harmless.

Before October, Elizabetha launches her attack to convince Salazar to spend the latter part of the year with the family. It doesn’t take long for him to give in; arguing with that woman is like arguing with a wall, but the wall might eventually be convinced to remove itself from his path. They didn’t see much of each other during the latter 1950s, and Salazar feels the need to make up for that, even if it wasn’t his fault.

James Potter took his first steps before his birthday, but after that, he is off with no intention of stopping. He gives his parents quite a bit of exercise when it comes to chasing him down. The boy is utterly fearless in a way that is painfully familiar, but the awe on his small face as the carved turnips and gourds are lit for Punkie Night makes Salazar feel short of breath.

Gods, no wonder Nizar was utterly sick of being compared to his father. Even the toddler’s expressions are astoundingly familiar.

Salazar doesn’t manage to ask the family about Tom Riddle until the day before Hallowe’en. England is enjoying one of its rare and suspicious days of being unseasonably warm and sunny, so they’re taking breakfast in the back garden.

“Do you know of that upstart, Voldemort?”

“Upstart is certainly a good word for him.” Henry covers a slice of toast with preserves made by their servants. Two are magical and the rest are Squibs, but all of them are so properly English in their unobtrusiveness that it took Salazar several days back in August of 1945 to realize they existed.

“Right, him.” Monty snorts. “I might’ve married another Pure-blood, but I wasn’t looking to make a Pure-blood match. I was just looking for someone I loved.” Euphemia smiles at him from across the table while bouncing a toddler on her knee; James is trying to cram both of his hands into a fortuitously empty glass treated to a nigh religious amount of Impervious charms.

“Why do you mention him?” Elizabetha asks Salazar. “His speeches are foul, and they attract those of similar foul thought.”

“He’s a bit of nonsense, anyway.” Monty stirs honey into a fresh cup of tea. He witnessed Salazar do the same once, years ago, and decided it was the perfect thing to emulate. “His rubbish will blow over soon enough.”

Salazar exchanges glances with Euphemia, noting her paling face, before slowly shakes his head. “No. No, it won’t. Voldemort is not your usual soapbox-standing wizard looking to gather crowds.”

Elizabetha gives him a searching look. “You speak of bloodshed.”

Salazar scratches the back of his neck when his skin tingles and checks his watch. Eight-thirty in the morning. It feels vital that he knows the time, but doesn’t take the act for the warning it is. “Not only that. I speak of—”

He has no idea if he completes the sentence. There is such an abrupt wave of raw power surging through the Earth that Salazar doesn’t realize it was accompanied by fire until much later, when he discovers that the soles of his feet are raw and burnt. Before, it had merely been sensation. This time, it becomes reality.

It’s the second time he’s felt a surge that seeks ways to expend itself. Seeks exits.

Salazar has not used himself as a direct conduit for the Earth in a very long time. It’s not even his choice that it happens now.

He might be screaming when that power bursts free. He sees a flash of emerald green fire. He is a second shockwave, mirroring the strength of the first.

He blinks his eyes open to find hands on his shoulders. A face is saying words he can’t hear. His vision is a blurred mess, but that appears to be Henry.

Where is he? What was he just doing?

Sound and clarity come back in a rush. “—breathe, damn you!”

Salazar tries to take a breath and can’t. He grips at Henry’s arms with desperate hands, riding the edge of panic. He manages a single, wheezing creak that burns his throat.

He loses consciousness again. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more grateful.


	9. Safeguarding the Weary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Salazar would entomb himself until the worst of the bombings were done, but the Potters won’t let him. His task won’t let him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by flailing @norcumii who is hella patient <3 
> 
> Screaming at most things performed by me because Fuck So Much Of This.

There are many things about that particular morning that Salazar only discovers days later. It takes a while for consciousness, heartbeat, and breath to remember that they’re all meant to function at the same time. One of the three will often suffer a hiccup that drags him back down into blackness.

Elizabetha is with him when Salazar awakens without difficulty on the seventh of November. She declares it auspicious that he did so on Diwali. Given the sort of massive fireball that must’ve been lit off to leave him feeling this way, Salazar just thinks it terrible irony.

“Harry had to tell us all about your…curse,” is the second thing that Elizabetha says to him, which causes Salazar to stare at her in shock. That she and Henry are aware of his identity is one thing, but the others—

Elizabetha ignores his gaping stare, continuing on as if they’re discussing a normal event rather than a terrible secret. “He is sorry for doing so, but it was the only means available to my husband to keep the rest of us from sending for the healers. Of course, by the third time you awoke despite your body’s inability to function properly, it was rather obvious that Death was not coming for you.”

“Not for a while yet, at least,” Salazar whispers. His voice is a wreck, his throat raw. He tastes a hint of copper and wonders if he bit the inside of his mouth.

“Strange, though.” Elizabetha raises an eyebrow. “I already knew you were long-lived, but I do not sense that you are cursed. Different, certainly, but not cursed.”

“It was…” His throat dries up and refuses more words. Elizabetha chastises herself in angry blended English and Punjabi before helping him to sit up, to sip at honeyed rosewater until it feels less like he swallowed fire.

In a sense, Salazar did exactly that.

“It was the simplest explanation I had at the time. You do not think it a curse?”

Elizabetha smiles after she helps him to lie back down. “No. I don’t think Harry would be alive if you were not exactly as you are, and the gift of a saved life is never a curse.”

Salazar wiggles his fingers and is glad that they feel uninjured, if a bit numb. “It oft feels like one.”

“My good friend survived an event that would have killed another man. It is _not_ a curse,” Elizabetha retorts crossly. “I must check your feet. They were burnt.”

“Irradiated?” Salazar gasps out in sudden concern. There is a young child in this house, not to mention others who do not need to live and breathe that poison.

“No. Merely burned. The intensity of the magic you channeled was too much for them.” Elizabetha lifts one of Salazar’s bare feet from the bed to peer at it with a critical eye. “This is ever so much better. The first day, the soles of your feet were burnt black. I wasn’t certain my healing balms were up to that sort of challenge, but Euphemia’s skills have not deteriorated since her time at university. She did excellent work, though most of her efforts were devoted to convincing your heart that not only was it meant to beat, it was to do so in a regular rhythm.”

Salazar tries to gather his scattering thoughts. Given how light-headed he is, there is more rest waiting in his immediate future. When you cannot die from deadly wounds, the only alternative is to sleep. “I’m glad to have missed witnessing my feet in such condition, then. What happened to cause this?”

“You do not recall?” Elizabetha asks, though she seems concerned rather than surprised.

Salazar gives a brief shake of his head. “I was a bit preoccupied.”

“I can only imagine,” Elizabetha comments without judgment, investigating the condition of his other foot. He can scarcely feel the touch of her hands on his skin, and wonders if the cause is damaged nerves or numbing salves. “The Soviets detonated a nuclear bomb, a very large one.[1] They are hiding the details, as usual, but the entire world knows what they did. Many leaders have condemned the act. The scientists on the Muggle wireless say that this particular Soviet bomb has to have been the largest device of its kind ever created.”

“It certainly felt like it,” Salazar mutters. He’s suddenly grateful for the multitude of previous detonations. If he had experienced that surge of power without warning of any sort, then—no. He can’t think on that. “How does everyone else know what was done?”

“Largest device of its kind,” Elizabetha repeats. “The windows of homes in Norway and Finland shattered due to the blast wave from Russia.”

Salazar feels his heart try to stall out again in shock. “That—”

Fucking bloody hell, that is _ludicrous_. He’d even go so far as to label it impossible, but he felt its strength. Too much of it.

There are other consequences that are far more important than windows. “What happened here? What did I do?”

Elizabetha gently lowers his foot and then returns to the chair at his bedside. She adjusts her sari before settling into place. “You stood up mid-word and flung yourself back from the breakfast table. Even though whatever was occurring pained you, you still ordered us to run for the house, to erect the wards that protect the manor against physical dangers. Your eyes were solid green with the shine of magic, trailing their own silver flame. It was quite beautiful,” she adds in a thoughtful tone, “but many beautiful things are deadly.”

Salazar thinks on a valley in Spain that still bears his name. “Yes.”

“I have a good eye for magic. Euphemia is better, especially after the birth of my grandson. Behind the protection of the wards, she could tell us that the magic of the earth was wrathful. A reverse lightning rod, she called you.” Elizabetha reaches out and pats Salazar’s shoulder, sensing his sudden fear. “You harmed no one, I promise. You had no choice but to release that magic. When you disappeared from our sight, a wave of green fire struck the house’s wards. We could all feel its impact. Harry suffered a brief moment of fearing the wards would not hold, but they did.”

“What damage was caused?” Please let him not have carved another valley by accident. This was once Godric’s land, and that man’s spirit would not hesitate to invade his dreams to castigate him, or possibly to laugh at him.

“Godric’s Hollow was mostly protected by the wards of the Manor, and by the grove that lies north of our home,” Elizabetha replies. “The windows of homes on the eastern and western edges of the village were damaged, but glass can be repaired.” Then she grins at him in pure mischief. “You temporarily emptied the River Yeo. The water did not quite dare to flow through its channel for several hours.”

“That…oh. Oh, gods. What does the back garden look like?” Salazar asks in weary resignation. There is likely no garden left at all.

“The oldest and strongest of our trees still stand. Otherwise…you have left the back garden a barren crater, which is just as well. I’ve wanted to change it for quite a while now.”

Salazar groans and lifts his trembling arms to plaster his hands over his face. A crater is, at least, not a valley.

“Not a blade of grass remains. No stone was left unturned unless they were protected by the wards. You also destroyed every single pane of glass in Ilchester,” Elizabetha adds. “The Muggles are convinced there was some sort of earthquake, and they’re not entirely wrong. Otherwise, but for a few collapsed garden sheds and blown-over fences, that is the worst but for the damage to yourself.”

“The breakfast dishes. Those were from your family,” Salazar remembers with sudden guilt. “I’m sorry. Are they—”

“Pulverized, I believe would be the most accurate term.” Elizabetha still sounds as if everything that occurred is _funny_. Salazar will never understand this woman. “I have other things that belonged to my family which are of much greater value than a few dishes and teacups, Saul. If they were to be destroyed, I would rather it be an accident than by someone’s intentional act of vandalism.”

“I can fix the garden, the shape of it,” Salazar offers after a minute of silence. “Or…however you would like it. You did say you wanted to change it.” Now _he’s_ laughing, faint huffs of pained air that refuse to stop. He turned the family’s back garden into a crater. He is the absolute _worst_ houseguest.

“I will draw my ideas while you rest,” Elizabetha tells him while Salazar tries not to hiccup his way through a half-hysterical giggle. “The next time you wake, you should eat.”

Salazar misses the part of the conversation that involved falling asleep. He wakes again much later, suspecting that Elizabetha added magic to her statement to make rest a certainty. A faint glow is coming from beneath the closed door. By the lack of light from the windows, Salazar assumes it’s the middle of the night. Early morning, perhaps?

He tries to light the candle on the bedside table with his magic.

He remembers, far too late, that this is a _terrible_ idea.

The burning in his veins is like the aftermath of the very first skirmish he’d fought before the walls of Hogewáþ. The fire he meant to conjure for a mere candle burns through him, instead, lighting up the paths in which magic travels through the body until he has to grit his teeth against the urge to scream.

Salazar must have made some sound, or there are monitoring spells in his room. Euphemia is at his bedside moments later, wearing a dressing gown and bearing a half-asleep, drooling toddler over her left shoulder. “Saul?” She lights the candles with a flick of her finger until the room is bathed in orange-gold shades of light.

He grimaces at her in a miserable failure of a greeting. He hopes his clenched fists, nails biting into his palms, answers her implied question.

“Oh, my.” Euphemia tilts her head. “You’re lit up from within, just like the ley lines outside.”

That loosens his tongue. “The ley lines are _still_ alight?” he gasps. Gods, that’s a terrifying thought, especially once he thinks of the grove that hides Griffon’s Door.

“They are,” Euphemia affirms, “though the glow is now much diminished. Your glow is fading, too.” She retrieves her wand and casts a wordless spell. Gentle blue light bathes him in a numbing wave that helps to soothe the fire.

Salazar slowly relaxes his hands. His veins still burn, but it’s no longer agony. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Euphemia smiles. “I was up with James already. We were going to be joining you shortly. Can I do anything for you?”

Salazar would like to be able to say yes, but there is nothing to be done. “I’ll be fine as long as I don’t attempt to use magic again for…” He searches his memory and gives up when the answer won’t come to him. “A while.”

“Even an Elemental Magician isn’t meant to channel that much magic at once, are they?”

“We’re really not,” Salazar replies. “No one is.”

If he were mortal, that bomb might have killed him. Any Earth Speakers within five hundred miles of the explosion were most likely turned into piles of ash.

Please let there have been no other Earth Speakers close to the blast. May they all have been safely on the opposite side of the planet.

That, he reflects, is a pipe dream.

Salazar takes a deep breath and coughs as still-healing wounds in his lungs make their presence known. He may well have fried himself trying to give that power an outlet—not that the earth had given him much choice. The fact that he awoke a mere eight days after the blast does prove his theory about developing a tolerance for the intolerable.

Euphemia helps him to drink more of Elizabetha’s honeyed rosewater, which soothes the burn. She also offers him food, but his stomach abruptly turns over at the notion. Not yet, then. Euphemia eventually agrees with him, though she has a pinched expression that speaks of her unhappiness with that statement. It probably isn’t reassuring to say that he cannot die of starvation, but it’s still true.

Salazar lifts his head to peer down at the end of the bed. His feet are hidden beneath the quilt, and while he can wiggle his toes and know that they still obey him, he doesn’t think he could yet lift his legs. “I’d like to—can you help me to look? I’d see the damage for myself.”

“Of course.” Euphemia lays James down on the sofa near the window and covers him with a spare blanket. Baby James has so little interest in current events that he settles into a deep sleep at once.

Euphemia pulls back quilt and sheet, revealing that he is in his own age-softened nightgown. He should probably replace it, given how Western society has firmly shifted away from long shirts to instead revel in pyjamas. Salazar hadn’t expected it to stay that way after so many long centuries. Nizar’s portrait often points out that he did warn him that it would happen, but Salazar is stubborn. It’s a family trait.

Salazar grimaces when Euphemia lifts his right leg and helps him to bend it at the knee until he can catch a glimpse of the bottom of his foot. It’s blistered and red from being burnt. If he began with charred skin, then this is the much improved version. “I would have avoided it if I could. I haven’t done that deliberately since I was fourteen years old.”

“It’s been a long time, then,” Euphemia says with a gentle smile.

“Yes. That was…that was a very long time ago.”

Euphemia lowers his leg and covers him with the bedclothes again. “I would enjoy hearing about it.”

“Oh, that time was not as dramatic as this one,” Salazar tells her. His eyes are beginning to burn from wakefulness that has already gone on for too long. “It was the time before that, the first time.”

“I would still listen,” Euphemia says, “if you don’t mind speaking of it. Especially if this has only been the third time you’ve turned the ground into a crater.”

Salazar considers it and decides that, at this point, there is no harm. The damage is already done, the cat out of the bag, but at least it was not his blunder. He can most assuredly blame a nuclear detonation.

“In Navarra, south of the mountains, there was once a flat plain. In my father’s tongue, it was called _Sarasaitzu_ , a word from _salvus_ , and from _sol_. It meant safe. Well-kept. The mountains helped to keep the Franks from overtaking _Euskaldunak_ lands. The plain gave us a place to stand and fight anyone who succeeded in crawling their way over the mountains.”

Euphemia appears fascinated. “The Franks. You mean Charlemagne.”

“He was only one of many, and well before my time.” Salazar briefly closes his eyes, feeling the unsteady vertigo of magical exhaustion. “When I was a young man, someone else chose _Sarasaitzu_ as our field of battle, though we told him it was the wrong place to stand and fight. The Caliphate’s soldiers came at us from the south, and the plain was no longer our safe place. It wasn’t an advantage any longer. We were trapped against the mountains.

“I wanted us safely away. I bloody well wanted to go home to my wife.” Salazar turns his head to look at James, his tiny fingers twitching in his sleep. “Children are resilient. Children do not know there are limits if they are never told the limits exist. Thus, I turned most of the plain of _Sarasaitzu_ into a valley. The soldiers of the Caliphate, they called it Salazar’s Valley. Now, everyone does. I don’t think I’ve yet lived that down.”

“Is there anyone left who still knows the valley is named for you?” Euphemia asks, wide-eyed.

“A few. Not who you might expect, and certainly not where,” Salazar replies, yawning. He’ll be asleep soon, whether he likes it or not.

“You know, when history says that Salazar Slytherin left Hogwarts, I don’t think this is what anyone had in mind.”

That nearly jolts him back to full awareness, but then his thumb brushes against the silver ring on his left middle finger. It isn’t turned inward, which means the symbol of his House, a match for the tapestry that hung in Monty’s bedroom as a child, is easy to see. “Of course not. They’re all set on believing fanciful nonsense.”

Euphemia bites her lip, holding back the question she wants to ask. “I won’t be offended, whatever it is,” Salazar tells her. “I’m a bit too tired for that.”

Euphemia’s smile is faint, but real. “Did you learn it? Not to hate those who aren’t Pure-bloods?”

“There were no such terms in those days,” Salazar says crossly. Henry could at least have done him the favor of sharing that information with the others already. It’s disaster enough that Euphemia and Monty now have awareness of the dangerous secret of Salazar’s continued existence. “One was a magician, or one was not. That’s it. If you want proper history, consider that the school was founded in 990 AD, that all of us agreed it should be hidden from non-magical eyes for our safety in 992, and that I did not leave my school until the year 1037.”

“Then why did you go?” Euphemia asks softly, a sad glint in her eyes. “If all of the tales of bigotry are false, why leave at all?”

“I mentioned that there are a few who still know the tale of the valley?” Salazar swallows down sudden, unwanted, _unneeded_ grief. “I would not have chosen this long life if it was only for myself. I chose it for another.”

* * * *

“Salazar Slytherin is a Half-blood. Those idiot Pure-bloods hanging onto Voldemort’s every word would never believe it,” Monty says.

Salazar rolls his eyes and keeps a tight grip on his teacup with both hands. It’s only been two days, and sometimes his fingers stop cooperating. Elizabetha has started threatening to bill him for her need to repair broken crockery. “Don’t use that name for me.” _Even though it’s good to hear it again_.

“Why not? It’s yours, our wards are some of the best in the country, and it isn’t as if the servants are listening in,” Monty counters.

The servants in question had, Salazar learned, been granted a fortnight off, with pay. They won’t be about to question the Potter family’s half-dead houseguest. “Because that is a dangerous name for a magician in Britain to use.”

Monty glares down at the empty honey pot and resentfully drops a sugar cube into his tea. “What, because of the historical baggage behind it? I’ve been out and about enough to know it’s still a common name in Spain.”

“Spain doesn’t give a damn about Hogwarts and her history, though. Their children go to Beauxbatons to dwell in safety, and so that Spain’s magical children learn about more types of government aside from Franco’s regime.” Salazar sips his tea and tries to ignore the taste of the Restorative Potion he added. He’d rather drink the potion outright, but at the moment doing so makes him nauseous for hours. “As your father is fond of pointing out, I live here, even if I remain a citizen of the kingdom of Spain.”

“Spain isn’t a kingdom anymore,” Monty says, brows furrowed.

Salazar sighs. “Try telling the kingdom’s magic that. There are still Heirs, and Spain’s last king abandoned the throne without dissolving the monarchy.” He’s gotten used to that insistent chiming, the call to install a new ruler on the Spanish throne. It’s background noise, white noise, that he only hears now if he focuses on that magic alone. “But that doesn’t matter. You know who Voldemort says he is descended from.”

“Of course. He says he’s a direct descendent of…well, you.” Monty frowns. “Is he lying?”

“I’d very much like him to be, but no, he isn’t. Voldemort is a Gaunt-descended magician who is truly my direct descendent, but I haven’t yet figured out how the Gaunts are connected to myself. I’ve not had anything to do with that family in a very long time.” He suspects the locket thief, the Lady Milescenta Fawcett, as she married a Gaunt magician named Utredus shortly after their ill-advised affair. He hadn’t yet realized she’d stolen Marion’s locket, or he would not have been so civil during their brief meeting after her wedding. He has no idea what their son was like in appearance or mannerisms, but hopes he wasn’t as foul as Milescenta and Utredus proved to be.

“You think that anyone who starts calling themselves Salazar might be seen as proclaiming that they agree with Voldemort.” Monty grimaces and shakes his head. “You know, if you did that, you’d certainly have an easy time of infiltrating his little group of fools. If you planned on doing that. Which I’m almost certain you are.”

Salazar smiles. “Henry thinks it likely, doesn’t he?”

“He’s certain. I won’t be convinced until you say it,” Monty admits. “Dealing with Grindelwald directly was hard on Dad, and I saw it after he came home from the war. Then there were the few stupid bastards who tried to accuse him of truly being _for_ Grindelwald.”

Salazar nods in agreement. If he were more well-known, he might’ve suffered the same annoyance. Leonard had to release severely edited documentation regarding Henry’s service during the war so that those with loud mouths and no brains would silence themselves. “I’ve been spying on Voldemort already, Monty. I just refuse to use my own face to do so.”

Monty sits back in his chair. “Well…shit,” he finally says.

“It is indeed that.”

Monty sets down his teacup, no longer interested in it. “You think whatever Voldemort does is going to be that bad.”

“I’ve a mastery in Divination, Monty. Of course I do,” Salazar answers. “Euphemia believes it, too.”

“I was hoping it was fear speaking. Not to disrespect my wife’s opinion, but Voldemort is stirring up quite a bit of fear to go along with his hateful philosophies.” Monty rubs at his forehead. “I’m only thirty-two, and I already feel as if I’m too old for this.”

“There is another thing, one you’ll not like.” Salazar makes himself finish his tea, if only not to waste the potion. “But I’d prefer to wait until the family has gathered together, and I’m capable of joining you at the dinner table, before I speak of it.”

“All right. It isn’t as if you’re going anywhere in the meantime,” Monty says in a vain attempt at humor. “Should it only be the four of us—five, with James—or do I need to invite Aunt Dorea and Uncle Charles? Or Great-aunt Isobella and the cousins?”

“Isobella Potter is getting to be a bit frail. I would hate to damage her heath.” Salazar thinks about it. “Charles and Dorea, perhaps, though I would appreciate if none of you mention my age or true name to them. The fewer who know, the safer they are. As for your cousins?” Henry, Charlus, and Monty only have first cousins remaining in Charlotte and her son Samuel. The boy is far too young for any sort of talk of spying and war, and Salazar doesn’t wish to endanger his only remaining parent. They’ve no second cousins remaining; their third cousins are of older stock, though they’re not nearly as old as Isobella. Those four cousins are widows and widowers, and the only child produced by one of those marriages died young, felled by a non-magical illness that magicians on this isle too often believe they’re immune to. “I don’t mind if Walter, Gilbert, Olivia, and Robert are asked, but you should tell them of the severity of what they will hear.”

“You’re going to tell us exactly what we should expect, aren’t you?” Monty asks, eyes widening a bit in surprise.

“Yes.” Salazar feels his gut clench at the idea, but he will not let his family face this war with no warning. Telling them of the danger does not mean he is changing history; after this, their choices are their own. “The Potters haven’t yet been declared Blood Traitors by these so-called Knights of Walpurgis, but that could change at any time.”

“It could.” Monty shrugs over his unwanted tea and picks up a sugar cube, tossing it into his mouth and crunching it into dissolving bits. Salazar smiles at the sight, gladdened as he always is when he sees adults retain certain youthful, harmless habits and tastes. “Dad says that you’re family, and I believe him. You’ve always felt like you’re already familiar to me. Made it easier to like you, even though you’d already saved Dad. He doesn’t know how, though. Do you?”

Salazar shakes his head. “Much like Voldemort, I’m still searching for that connection. I know that it isn’t direct descent; that is easier to discern. I also know it isn’t through your ancestor Ignotus Peverell, as he didn’t hold Deslizarse blood. My real family name,” he adds, when Monty gives him a baffled look. “Casa de Deslizarse. It was rather mauled by the northern tongues.”

Monty snorts. “I’ll say. Mauling might be putting it kindly.”

“I told them the modern translation in Castilian—which has not changed since those days—was _slither_. Terrible mistake, that, but I didn’t know enough of the languages at the time to realize it. Old English had the word _slidrian_ : to slide. The Britons had a similar term, influenced by Latin from the time of the Romans on the isle. Slither, _slidrian_ …it was a bit too late to take it back when they turned my name into Slytherin.”

“What was the old meaning, then? I know enough Spanish to recognize that you probably aren’t meaning to say House of Slither.”

“That is far less complicated,” Salazar says. “Deslizarse comes from an ancient word that also meant _to slide_ , but in those days, many people found it easier, or wiser, to describe a creature by its nature rather than specific names. If you walked a mile and found yourself in the midst of another group’s language, that description would translate faster than a special term. It’s similar to how adder was not originally the name for Britain’s only viper, but the Old English term used for _any_ snake. My family kept that original word. If one says my family name in the old way, it is more properly translated as the Ancient House of Serpents.”

“Fascinating.” Monty gives him a wry smile. “You’re reminding me of why I’m not a linguist.”

“Not many are suited to it. My teacher was the nature of necessity,” Salazar replies. “Go ahead. Ask, Monty. You’ll drive yourself mad if you don’t.”

Monty gives it one more go of resisting before he gives up. “All right. You knew Ignotus Peverell?”

Salazar nods. “I did. Quite well, in fact.”

“He’s buried in the graveyard in the village proper,” Monty says. “It’s how the family is so certain of our descent from him, whereas the rest of Britain thinks the Peverell brothers are a nursery tale.”

“The rest of Britain can get stuffed,” Salazar retorts in a mild voice. “Of course they existed. I knew all three of them. Ignotus was my apprentice in northern France after he graduated from Hogewáþ. He was a brilliant lad who married a brilliant wife, and between the two of them they had an equally brilliant son.”

Monty blinks at him a few times. “Well, that was unexpected. It seems you were already in the habit of crossing paths with our family. We still have the tales and a few records that show Ignotus was a Master of Magical Invention. Do you know how he made the family cloak? It’s the only thing we have left of him aside from a grave and a story.”

Salazar takes a careful breath. “Ignotus did not make that Cloak.”

“What? Then how—”

“Some things are not mere tales, and that is all I should say on the matter,” Salazar interrupts, meeting Monty’s eyes. “Some questions should not be asked, some answers not confirmed. They tend to gain the sort of attention you might not want.”

“Oh.” Monty turns pale, but he is not cowed. He is a Potter, and will one day pass this steel down to his grandson. “The wand?”

“Grindelwald.”

“Good God.” Monty whistles and shakes his head. “Lost afterwards?” Salazar nods in confirmation. “Right. What of the stone?”

“Also lost, and has been for many centuries,” Salazar replies. “I hope to the gods that the wand has suffered the same fate.”

* * * *

A week after his conversation with Monty regarding the varying fates of the Deathly Hallows, Salazar still feels like a complete disaster, but he can stand on his feet and walk without regret. This convalescence is the same but different from the first time he suffered through the feel of burning earth. The blast was worse, but he is accustomed to its feel, to the way the earth sings of her pain. He was weak the first time, slow to gain strength, but capable of any feat of magic save that of interacting with his element. This time he is faster to gain strength, but performing magic will be beyond him for weeks yet. His sense of balance has deserted him, and he requires a cane as he walks about—a lesson he stubbornly learned the hard way.

Standing on the ground floor of the manor is mindful of walking on volcanic rock that is just beginning to cool. Salazar imagines that standing directly on the soil outside will be intolerable. He can’t see the ley lines of the earth as Euphemia can, but he can feel how disturbed she is, how angry. If he stepped out the door and put his foot down, he’d likely land on his face from another bout of unconsciousness.

The heat doesn’t distract him from surveying the destruction that used to be Potter Manor’s back garden, his feet planted firmly on the last remaining stones that were once the path leading into the garden proper. “Good fucking gods.”

“My wife did tell you it was a crater.” Henry stands close by, his hands on his hips as he keeps an eye on Salazar. Given that Salazar almost fell down the stairs twice this morning, he isn’t protesting having a watchful shadow to accompany his borrowed cane.

“That she did.” Salazar thinks maybe Elizabetha should have been a bit more specific. “I won’t be able to fix this for weeks. Not until…” He pulls a face. Myrddin had given him such the disgusted look, saying that potions didn’t require magic to brew, so there was no reason not to start Salazar’s apprenticeship then and there. That disgusted look had only grown when Salazar, baffled, said he’d never brewed a potion in his entire life.

“We understand. The weather is getting to be a bit chill for nights in the back garden, anyway,” Henry says.

Salazar wrinkles his nose as a snowflake lands on it. It shouldn’t yet be snowing, not this far south, but he imagines the world’s largest nuclear explosion is interfering with the weather. “Don’t leave it cratered like this, or it’ll be even more of a mess to deal with come spring. I can change whatever Elizabetha decides upon, even if the soil has had the whole of winter to settle and freeze.”

Henry thinks about it before nodding. It takes long minutes, and several passes of his wand, for Henry to gather up enough far-flung earth and stone to fill the crater. “I found you in the bottom of that spectacular hole. Your shoes were gone. Vaporized, I imagine, along with your wristwatch. Your hands and feet were burnt, though your feet were ever so much worse. You were not breathing and your heart was not beating. _Please_ do not put me through that sort of experience again.”

 _That is the difficulty, isn’t it?_ Salazar thinks, and resists the urge to sigh.

He was not quite honest with Monty. There are two conversations he needs to have with the family, but the first is for Henry, Elizabetha, Monty, and Euphemia…and James, though James will likely have no interest in it.

Salazar waits until afternoon tea is almost over before he says what the others won’t want to hear. “After tonight, I need to go home.”

Elizabetha and Monty have similar expressions when they’re unimpressed by someone’s words. “You’re not yet well enough to be on your own,” Elizabetha says.

“I’ve been on my own in far worse shape, but it isn’t solitude I’m seeking.” Salazar glances around the table, his gaze lingering longest on young James. He pulled apart his samosa to extract the peas, and is now mashing them with his spoon in quite the show of grim determination. “If the Soviets detonate another bomb like the one they used on the thirtieth, I could easily kill you all.”

Salazar holds up his hands to silence their protests. “Of course it would not be deliberate. But—I had _no warning_. I have no conscious recollection of telling you how to safeguard yourselves. I had no time to find a distant place where it would be safe to unleash that sort of power. What if that happens within the wards?”

“We could enclose you in a Shield Charm,” Monty suggests.

“Do you truly think that would work?” Salazar counters. “Because I do not.”

“I don’t, either. Not after what you nearly did to the wards from the outside.” Henry sighs. “We are all capable of choosing what sort of danger we place ourselves in. I’ll not turn out a friend, Saul. I do not believe any of us would do so.”

Salazar glares at Henry. “Yes. You _four_ can choose.” He points at James, who is happily ignoring his peas now that they’re too crushed to be easily eaten. “He cannot. I will not endanger this child. Not until we know with some degree of certainty that nothing like this will ever happen again.”

“It could be a decade before we have that sort of certainty,” Monty protests. “Or longer!”

“Then it’s a decade, or it is longer, and I strongly suspect it will be longer. I’ve been thinking, and I’ve come to believe that James should not know my face. Not as a person he will have memories of meeting, at least.”

The others are silent. Henry is the first to understand, but he saw the badly named Great War, and then spied for Allies of both sorts in World War II. “This is what you were trying to speak of before the nuclear device was detonated. You believe Voldemort is going to start another magical war—this time on British soil.”

Salazar would truly prefer to say otherwise. “I don’t believe it, Henry. I know that he will.”

“Divination.” Henry closes his eyes and rubs them with his fingertips. Elizabetha looks not afraid, but vastly annoyed by the idea of another magical conflict. Monty and Euphemia both stare at James in the manner of parents who’ve just realized that there is far more in the world that can endanger their child than they’ve had time to contemplate. “Voldemort is the one you meant when we spoke of it in 1943. The one you saw reflected on the water.”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to spy on him, aren’t you?” Henry asks.

“I already am, but I intend to become more thorough about it, and I’ll be doing it soon. I don’t yet know how successful I will be,” Salazar admits. “Voldemort may use some of Grindelwald’s tools, but he is _smarter_ than Grindelwald. I think it will require a great deal of cunning, and a vast amount of patience.”

Euphemia glances at him. “Didn’t Grindelwald require the same?”

“Grindelwald wanted to be adored,” Salazar replies. “For all his airs, for all his collecting of sycophants, I don’t think Voldemort cares about adoration. That makes him far more dangerous.”

“If you’re caught, if Voldemort sees your real face, you don’t want James to have any knowledge of what you look like. You’re already making contingency plans for _losing_ this war,” Monty realizes, horrified.

“Yes and no,” Salazar hurries to reassure him, “but I’d rather all of you be safe. I want no rumors of your continued friendship with me to find its way to Voldemort’s followers. I’d stage a public argument if it weren’t simpler to simply vanish from society’s eye. If my name becomes known, I would give them as little reason as possible to knock upon your door. I’d also rather James not yet know that one of the family friends is getting into that sort of mischief. None of you would ever deliberately endanger me, but James is a child. Children often say things they believe to be harmless that are not so harmless at all.”

Henry looks bitter. “Grindelwald was bad enough. The Nazis were horrific. I’m far too old to fight in yet another war.”

“But I’m not.” Monty reaches out to take Euphemia’s hand when she offers it. “I will not see war break out on this island and do nothing about it.”

“You will not do so as a spy.” Salazar smiles when Monty looks offended. “You don’t have the heart for it, and I don’t mean that as an insult. I’m glad that you don’t. So is your father.” Monty looks to Henry, who nods. “Don’t get ensnared in that sort of web. Stay here and be a father to your son. You’ll know when it is time to fight, and that time is not now.” _Not yet_.

“Letters,” Henry says, glancing at Salazar. “There is no harm in that, not when some of us are already practiced at speaking of nothing of consequence.”

“I aim to give the impression that I am rather unavailable.” Salazar thinks on it. “It will be easy enough to imply that I’m a great distance away.” Figuratively, it will even be true, and the idea of letters is a relief. He didn’t want to be so distant from the family that he dwelled in utter solitude once more.

“Visit anyway,” Elizabetha suddenly orders, giving Salazar a firm glare. “You will not risk my grandson? Then we will not, but in ten years’ time, he will be going to Hogwarts. If Hogwarts is no longer a safe option, he will attend Beauxbatons. No matter which, James will not be here. We will see you again the moment James is away on the train on first September 1971, or I will hunt you down and learn the reason why.”

“You’ll see me at least once before that time,” Salazar reminds her, “though I’d ask you to have James away from here when I do so. I did say I would fix your garden.”

Elizabetha decides Salazar is accepting her terms, and smiles her approval. “You did say it would be done. The Spring Equinox is an auspicious time for magic.”

“Then the Spring Equinox is shall be.”

That night, Salazar joins them at the table again for supper, held early so James won’t fall asleep in his own food. Dorea and Charles are there, though Salazar finds he isn’t much surprised that Olivia Potter Sinistra, siblings Walter and Gilbert Potter, and aging Robert Potter decide not to attend. They all participated in World War II, and all except Robert are of an age with Henry. The last war has been over with for years, but they’re all still so bloody _tired_. Salazar can’t blame them for choosing rest over intrigue. Charlotte does attend, despite his suggestion against it. At sixty-seven years of age, she remains unbowed by time. Motherhood suited her, a counterbalance to grief. Sam isn’t present; it shocks Salazar to realize that the small boy he remembers is now sixteen, attending his sixth year at Hogwarts.

Salazar had already asked for what he wanted to speak of to wait until after supper, and he’s glad he made that decision. Talk flows easily, of light-hearted subjects. Charlotte reveals that Sam is dating a fifth-year girl named Joan Macmillan, daughter of the oft-annoying Amfractus, but also tied to the Black family as a niece of Melania Macmillan Black, Lucretia’s mother.

“Potters and Blacks do like to mingle, don’t they?” Salazar asks the entire table, teasing. Charlotte smiles; Dorea lets out a bright peal of laughter. “Charlotte, does the young lady in question have, say, violet eyes?”

Charlotte mock-glares at him. “He was an _infant_ at the time, Saul!” Salazar understands that to be _yes_ and merely grins back at her.

After the meal concludes, and Euphemia returns from bearing a table-napping toddler away to bed, Salazar begins speaking. He is honest: he tells the family that the Knights of Walpurgis is not the true name of Voldemort’s followers, that they’ll eventually cloak their faces and hide behind something worse. He speaks of their unswaying belief in blood superiority, an idea fueled by Voldemort despite the fact that Voldemort is himself a Half-blood.

There will be slaughters—he has seen it reflected on the water, and while sometimes the future flexes, what Salazar views during water-scrying has rarely been anything except foregone truth. Blood feuds will be declared. Blood Traitors will be named. Voldemort will stir up the bigots among the Pure-blooded families and bigoted Half-blooded wizards and witches to such a great extent that they won’t need Voldemort to lead them. They’ll begin the slaughter themselves, and Voldemort will take credit for the beginning of his great, cleansing crusade to rid Britain of all Muggles and Muggle-borns.

There is no one on this isle who will not be in danger. The war might even spread beyond the British Isles, though Salazar hopes it does not. Safety will lie within Hogwarts, and within the manors old enough to have wards and protections that are cemented in by the centuries. He doesn’t suggest anyone live in fear, but he does say that they should live with the recognition that when the war begins, fighting for their lives will not be chance, but most likely a reality.

Salazar leaves the table when the family falls to talking, discussing what they’ve been told. Some are more believing than others, but if Henry and Elizabetha’s steady confidence doesn’t sway them, nothing will. Besides, they may deny it for now all they like. The future will bring proof soon enough.

The Willow House is quiet after dwelling at Potter Manor. Salazar is no longer used to spending the holidays alone but for two portraits…not that he would be good company if he had stayed. He spends most of his time in bed, blankets pulled over his head, trying to shut out the world as he heals.

It takes the whole of winter to recover from the largest nuclear detonation the world has ever known. Salazar can speak to the earth again without feeling poison and pain. The Soviet and American reports say that the nuclear bomb didn’t land on the ground, that there was almost no radiation to be found at the explosion site. Salazar rolls his eyes at that. Where do they think the radiation went? Do they believe it simply vanished? The earth protected herself from a catastrophic event by spreading the strength of that blow, that radiation, across land and sea, else his feet wouldn’t have looked as if he’d tried to dash across flowing lava.

Salazar would entomb himself until the worst of the bombings were done, but the Potters won’t let him. His task won’t let him. Thus, before he presents himself before any other living being outside the boundaries of his own home and lands, he creates a Port Key that will always reside in his jacket pocket. He’ll know it’s there; if instinct drove him to safeguard the Potters even in the midst of the Soviet bomb’s detonation, instinct will drive him to grasp that key and depart the moment he feels such wrongness occur. He’ll find himself on an empty island between Britain and Ireland, where there is no one to harm if he has to channel that sort of elemental rage.

He hopes it doesn’t. He wants never to experience such a thing ever again.

Most of his correspondence with the Potters during that time is composed of notes sent back and forth by Floo rather than long pages, as Salazar hasn’t the concentration for much else. When Elizabetha mentions the name Frank Longbottom, he sends the morning’s first Floo-borne note. That is a name his little brother knows, and only one man could be his father. Gods know Algernon doesn’t seem inclined.

_Elizabetha,_

_When the bloody hell did Robert and Augusta have a baby?_

_Saul,_

_Robert and Augusta Longbottom welcomed Franklin (Frank) into this world in 1958._

_You were delirious at the time._

_Elizabetha,_

_I don’t remember 1958. Has anyone else off and multiplied?_

_Saul,_

_Euphemia heard rumor that one of her Pryce cousins had a baby boy. Walburga and Orion announced the birth of the boy they hope will be the Black Family Heir, Sirius Orion Black III, in 1959. One of the Pettigrews had a son named Peter the same year James was born. Walburga and Orion just recently announced the birth of their second son, Regulus Arcturus Black II._

_One of the Max family wives gave birth to a girl named Alice. Amber Hitchens has a new granddaughter. The Selwyns are breeding at a terrifying rate. Charis and Caspar Crouch had a daughter. Augusta’s brother Basil finally has an Heir to the Burke name. The Vances have new daughters. Tryphena would now be a great aunt to Xenophilius Lovegood, had she lived to see it. The Mulcibers, Rosiers, Carrows, Macnairs, Fawleys, Jugsons, Parkinsons, and the Bones clan have all “multiplied.”_

_I’ve probably missed a fair number of them. I hope you still have all of your copies of the newspaper for the past few years in order to trace lineages, as you seem so fascinated by them._

_Elizabetha,_

_I’m fascinated by the sheer amount of stupidity to be found concentrated in so many British magical bloodlines._

* * * *

In 1962, the Spring Equinox and Holi fall upon the same day. He moves dirt and stone like he is stirring water, using Elizabetha’s drawings to create a garden that is much different from the one he accidentally destroyed. The Eastern influence Elizabetha brought to the family is now much more obvious. Salazar finds it soothing, which is exactly the sensation she wished to evoke.

Elizabetha exits the manor to gaze in approval at the new arrangements. “Yes. This is better. Flowers and herbs will finish bringing life back to this place.” Then she holds out a yellow clay jar. “You will break this one, Saul. I want my friend to make the first mark upon the new stone.”

Salazar takes the jar from her with gentle hands. “I’ve never…” He hasn’t exactly been available for Holi thanks to a mad decade of nuclear testing. If he participated in the holiday centuries ago, he cannot now recall.

Elizabetha nods her understanding and places her hands over his. The cool metal of her rings and jeweled bracelets rests against his skin. “For life. For love. For the day we meet again.”

Salazar thinks that a fine blessing. He helps her fling the jar onto the stones, where it erupts into a red cloud of palash and sandalwood.

“Sandalwood.” Salazar turns to Elizabetha, who looks at the red dye on her fingertips, shrugs, and dabs the first mark of red between her eyebrows. “My brother—he always—”

She reaches out and smears another red line between his brows. “Then I chose well.”

Salazar reaches out and holds her in a tight embrace. “Thank you.”

Elizabetha grips him just as tightly. “I will accept no thanks from you until you return to your family. We will be waiting for you, Salazar.”

Salazar steps back, gazing at her in fond bemusement. “We’re out of doors. That is a dangerous name to be using beyond the safety of the manor’s wards.”

Elizabetha shrugs, regarding him with a playful smile that will live forever in his memories. “The gods whisper, and I listen. I speak of what needs to be heard. You bear a strong name, and I will acknowledge it, if only the once. 1971, cousin. Do not forget.”

“I won’t.”

[1] Tsar Bomba, the most massive nuclear weapon ever created, detonated at 08:32 GMT. That fucker was terrifying. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba>


	10. The Pieces on the Board

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Salazar has also been working at another task. His little brother once asked him to attempt to look after others, perhaps even to save them. Aside from his parents and the newly included elder Potters, Nizar’s portrait gave him two lists of names.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flail: @norcumii! 
> 
> Author-flail: ME. SO FUCKING MUCH, ME.

Through the rest of the 1960s, Salazar splits his time between Muggle London and Wizarding Britain as the spy game intensifies. He’s never been able to do much about his accent unless he is disguised as another by magic, but he can claim origin in another country, not to mention a great deal of travel, to allay potential suspicion. The face of Saul Luiz is in too many photographs from the war era, pictures that are easy to find. Salazar and Henry are in one of those photographs together, though neither of them realized they’d been photographed until the _Daily Prophet_ re-used the image and the original translated French article in late August of 1945.

Voldemort will definitely want nothing to do with a man who might still be famous for helping to dethrone Grindelwald, and Salazar still fears what might happen if James Potter were to know his face. The dangers of Voldemort aside, it is eventually going to become obvious to anyone with eyes that he and the youngest Potter look far too much alike for it to be a mere coincidence.

Multa Facies Sucus will have to remain his answer. It’s easy enough to become someone else, to take on a new identity and discard it immediately afterwards unless it proves useful.

“Polyjuice, Sal!” Nizar’s portrait yells rather gleefully from the frame nearest to the cellar stairs.

“Fuck that stupid name!” Salazar retorts, powdering bicorn horn and wondering if he has enough for this particular batch of the potion. He would tolerate his potion’s changed name more easily if it were called Polyfaces, or perhaps a more proper Facies Poly, but some daft fool left out _faces_ when they changed the name. Calling it Many Juice makes no bloody sense at all.

He is also desperately trying to get himself back into a physical condition that isn’t pathetic. Walking up the path from his own home to the road and the Muggle mailbox should not leave him leaning over the brick wall at the roadside, gasping for breath and weak in the knees. The rations and the nuclear detonations have done away with all the physical recovery he managed to attain in 1946, before the bloody idiots started blowing holes in the earth in supposed name of science. The first years of this decade are also dedicated to regaining his sodding health.

Salazar hates to resume the use of the term Muggle—he remembers it’s an insult, if not why—but the word is too common in Britain to ignore. For him to use other words would mark him as different, and those who are different are those who are suspect. The same goes for Desplazarse; it must firmly become Apparate and Disapparate in his head, though he dislikes those terms for magical travel. Magicians must become wizards and witches. Wizarding Britain does still recognize other genders, if grudgingly. That concession helps to keep _witch_ and _wizard_ from driving Salazar up the bloody wall.

In the Muggle world, he accustoms himself to the changes in fashion happening at breakneck pace. Suits are becoming less and less common, though pleated trousers are still lurking about. What replaces them are trousers without pleats. Denims that are meant for daily wear, not for harsh work. Shirts without collars that are soft, with no hint of starch to be found. T-shirts are suddenly acceptable as outer garments instead of undergarments, and it isn’t long before color and art begins to adorn them. Suit jackets are replaced by far more casual jackets; coats from the previous decade are still acceptable, but they’ve been joined by options that are just as different as those newly casual, single-layered garments.

Now there is an idea that is _long_ overdue.

The first time Salazar wanders past Nizar’s portrait in denims and a white t-shirt, his brother stares at him in consternation. “All right. I have to admit, I never once considered the idea that you’d eventually be dressing down to _my_ era of casual. Nice denims.”

Salazar slips his feet into a pair of black workmen’s boots before snagging a black leather jacket that still smells like it just left the tannery. “And?”

Nizar tilts his head. “Puns not intended, but the look suits you. It’s fitting.”

Salazar doesn’t call Nizar out on the awful puns, intended or not, because he agrees. It _feels_ fitting, even if he still can’t go outside with his arms bared to the world. That’s asking a bit much. Shorts are entirely out of the question, and swimming costumes for men are now end above the knee, a change that still makes Salazar uncomfortable. It was better when swim costumes hung below the knee, like the old truis. That he could tolerate, though he still won’t go swimming in front of others without some sort of shirt on.

T-shirts and denims, though—the lack of restriction, the emphasis on comfort over appearance, soothes a part of him he’d never realized was already screaming that it’d had just about enough of this many-layered formalwear shit, thank you very much.

Robes, though, don’t bother him at all. They’ve changed too much and yet they’ve also changed too little. That is for the best, as he still needs to don them for trips to Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade.

He can’t attend the funeral, but it’s still disheartening to learn of Belvina Black Burke’s death in 1962. Her son, Phineas, is only seven years old. Herbert will see him raised well, and his aunt Mary will see him cared for, but Belvina had doted on her last surviving child. She deserved the chance to see him grow up; Phineas deserved to have a mother.

When he is not spying on those who he knows to be loyal to Voldemort, Salazar watches what is now formally referred to as The Space Race on the telly. He listens to certain broadcasts over the radio that are meant to be both out of range and secured against eavesdroppers such as himself, and wonders if they’re going to succeed at their endeavor. Satellites that can photograph the Earth from space are one thing, but his brother’s irritating portrait won’t tell him if this goal of landing on the moon will happen.

Music is beginning to remind him of the bards again, with their long tales meant to invigorate the mind and excite the heart. He could weep for the joy of it as humans once again lose their fear of pouring their passion into music, not just with orchestral strings and brass, but with _words_. The 1950s in terms of popular rock and roll was rather bland unless one knew which particular musicians to search for, but the 1960s? The fear is fading. It only gets better as the years pass, though Salazar is in the minority for being not so fond of The Beatles. He isn’t incapable of seeing what sort of benefit they are to music for the spreading of new sounds, but much like Elvis Presley from the States, they are about a decade behind the sounds to which they should pay the most attention. Give Salazar B.B. King any day, who truly understands what an electric guitar is capable of, of how to be part of a group or make himself stand alone. Aretha Franklin, who can make bloody near anything sound good just by applying her voice to the matter.

Worse, they treat music as if it’s an _industry._ Music is meant to be free for everyone, something anyone can participate in at any time they please. To give such elevated status to so very few is bloody offensive.

Salazar does purchase an album with the very strange name of _Sing Along With the Chipmunks_ simply because of the interesting title. He ends up lying on the floor, laughing until he gasps for breath. It’s entirely ridiculous…which is probably why he sends it, unlabeled, to Monty and Euphemia. They’ve a young boy who’ll no doubt decide this is to be mimicked.

Monty retaliates by sending him a package through the Wizarding Post, a box with a letter and a lidded jar. Salazar temporarily ignores the letter to investigate the jar, which is a branded British Wizarding product called Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion.

“ _Two drops tames even the most bothersome barnet_ ,” Salazar reads, pulling a face. If Monty is commenting on Salazar’s own hair, he can fuck right off. He’s kept it clipped short this century, even as men are beginning to grow their hair to longer lengths again.

The balm in the jar smells completely neutral, which is its first positive aspect after its ridiculous labeling. Salazar dips a finger into the jar and knows it has petroleum jelly in it by texture alone, but the label of ingredients confirms it. Gomas Barbadensis is a very stubborn magical rubber tree found only in Barbados; Salazar suspects its plentiful, inedible berries were used to help make this ill-named creation. Asian dragon hair is vague and could mean _any_ species, though several of those dragons have furry ruffs or fluff at the ends of their tails. That’s probably what is being used to neutralize the potion’s odor, especially as it also contains lanolin and castor oil. The rest of the ingredients are listed as part of a secret formula, though one of them is definitely an exceptionally fine clay. Salazar also identifies finely ground mica, possibly meant to increase the potion’s shine.

“Not to be used by gingers,” Salazar notes the warning at the end of the jar’s bottom label. “I wonder what they mean by unpleasant results.”

Salazar caps the jar, cleans the potion’s thick residue from his finger by washing his hands with a degreasing dish soap—washing this concoction out of one’s hair must be nightmarish—and opens Monty’s letter.

_Dear Saul,_

_I imagine you’ve heard about the threats made against the family. It’s a fine bit of gossip, and Dad has made a show of blowing it off as nonsense during meetings of the Wizengamot._

_It isn’t. You were right. I hate that you were right just as much as I’m grateful that you warned us in the first place. Euphemia, James, and I are living in the manor full-time again, safe behind the ancient family wards. James misses the cottage, but those wards don’t hold a candle to what guards the family home._

_We’re practically under house arrest. Dad can’t even attend sessions of the Wizengamot without one of his friends among the Aurors escorting him. They do a good job of making it seem like the situation is merely that of friends conversing and arriving together by chance, British stiff upper lip and all that._

_Well, more of making light of the situation so none of the other families who are against Voldemort bloody well panic. We’re not the only ancient House under threat. Dad would like your opinion on whether or not they should continue to hide the threat, or whether it would be more effective politically for everyone to know. Mum isn’t certain, he’s not certain—even Aunt Dorea and our Black cousins are at a loss. Personally, I think it would be like crying wolf, not when this Voldemort’s followers have yet to publicly do anything._

_As to this hair tonic? Yes, I’m responsible, but to be fair, Mum is to blame. I got bored, and then I overheard her complain that her hair not only ejected her hair pins last year, but might also have eaten one._

_That is why I don’t grow out my hair. I know better. James is just as cursed, and I keep my boy’s hair cut short._

_Anyway, I was bored, and I was presented with a problem. I thought I might as well do something with my alchemy schooling, so here we are now with a jar of goop, but it works. It’s sort of terrifying in how well it works. Euphemia says I’m not allowed to get bored anymore, no matter that I’m suddenly running a brand new company devoted to bloody hair care products. I have no idea how this became my life, but I certainly can’t complain of things being overly dull anymore._

_At least now, Mum can pin up her hair and it behaves itself. I even tried it on myself. Once. I included a photograph. You’ll see what I mean._

_James took one look at the provided example and declared it Sleek Easy, so that’s why it has a ridiculous name. Considering the trends of naming conventions in Wizarding Britain, there were certainly worse choices._

_(Chocolate Frogs. Hopping chocolate bloody frog sweets. By Merlin, what is this world coming to?)_

_I hope you’re well. We all miss you._

_—Monty_

_PS – Gingers get purple hair, baldness, or fire if they use this stuff. I still haven’t figured out why, but if you ever need to take revenge against a ginger, here you are._

Salazar raises an eyebrow and retrieves a single photograph from the envelope. Monty’s hair, instead of being its usual lively mess of brown curls, is sleek and flattened to his head in a style reminiscent of men at the turn of the century.

“That’s bloody unnatural.” Salazar then shows the photograph to Nizar’s portrait.

Nizar looks horrified. “That’s actually worse than what my hair used to look like. It’s so much worse. He needs to never do that again!” he declares, and Salazar laughs.

To Henry, Salazar suggests that he and the other Houses continue the “stiff upper lip” policy. Monty is correct; it would be like crying wolf to claim attacks now, especially when there is so little evidence. No captured perpetrators, no injuries—for which Salazar is grateful—and no witnesses beyond one or two individuals. In a Wizengamot dominated by Pure-blood bigots, they would be shouted down and painted as fools.

_Saul,_

_I’m already being painted the fool. Fortunately, the paint doesn’t wish to stick. Not yet, at least. I know these madmen are searching for something to discredit the ancient Houses who would prefer to avoid their fascism. They’re already after the Scamander family for, ironically, not joining their current Heir in the fight against Grindelwald after it became obvious that the latter was a threat to Wizarding Britain. That level of hypocrisy is astounding even for a governing body well known for it._

_Henry,_

_I’ve heard tell that they’ll be attempting the same of the Longbottoms. Callidora will eat them alive while Harfang applauds._

_Saul,_

_You’re a cruel man to give me false hope that such an event might come to pass._

The United States loses their popular president to assassination that November, on the 22nd. Salazar always easily remembers the date because he spends the next evening at home, hoping a new program on the telly will prove a good distraction from the politic-laden grief occurring across the pond. He and Nizar watch the whole of “Doctor Who,” beginning to end, before Salazar turns the telly off when the program has proven itself done.

“What the bloody hell did we just watch?”

“Time travel, aliens, culture shock, teachers with no sense of self preservation, and insanity,” Nizar’s portrait replies. “I think I like it.”

“I do as well, and one would think we’d both had enough of time travel in our lives to do without yet more of it, even if it’s fictional.”

“You read _The Time Machine,_ ” Nizar’s portrait points out.

“And resisted the urge to strangle Mister Wells for subjecting me to his idea of time travel for quite a while afterwards, also.”

Salazar relies on music more and more often, a crutch against the outpourings of hatred and vileness every time he has to witness one of Voldemort’s speeches. David Bowie and his group might have potential, though Salazar thinks at the moment that they’re too intent upon sounding like The Beatles thrown into a blender with Elvis. Salazar is quite fond of Fats Domino, especially when Domino’s visit to Britain proves that the man has taken up where deceased Glen Miller left off and turned Big Band into something Salazar doesn’t want to continuously stab to death. He doesn’t like it nearly as much when Miles Davis does the same, but he can’t explain why. Too much reliance on brass, perhaps, as Salazar has a self-admitted love of stringed instruments. The Kinks’ first album, aptly titled _Kinks_ , sounds like what recording labels still prefer—music never progressing beyond the sounds of the late 1950s—but then they diverge, slipping in five other, faster tracks that are entirely their own sort of sound. Much like Bowie, they bear watching.

He receives a letter in December 1964 that leaves him swearing aloud. He folds up the evidence, written in trembling penmanship, and debates on what response it merits.

Damn it.

After searching his wardrobe for the right sort of suit, Salazar Disapparates to a Disillusioned spot in London. He walks the rest of the way to Hyde Park Gate, where he is stopped by suited security. “Your employer is expecting me,” Salazar explains, giving his name before handing over the identification he never ceased carrying. One never knows if being retired from the SIS will be useful, and today, it is.

It’s also infuriating. “I told you I wanted nothing more to do with you after your foolish campaign to ‘Keep England White!’ in 1955!”

A far older man than Salazar viewed ten years ago looks up at him from a desk that is still stacked high with books and paperwork. “That you did, yes.” Winston Churchill retreats backwards from his desk to reveal that he is now fully reliant on a wheeled chair. “I believe your words were, ‘Fuck you, and may every horse you’ve ever ridden fuck you back in retaliation.’ It made me rather regret the number of horses I rode in my youth.”

Winston gestures for his butler and personal guard to leave the room. Both do so, but with visible hesitation. “Oh, bugger off, you paranoid fools,” Winston spits. “I don’t have anything to fear from Luiz, or from anyone else!”

When the door closes, Salazar asks, “How many brainstorms have you suffered?”

Winston snorts. “Too many. I keep astounding my doctors by refusing to die, but many like yourself will soon get your wish regarding my demise.”

“I didn’t want you dead. I wanted you to cease being _stupid_ ,” Salazar counters angrily. “How easy it is for certain ‘great’ men to forget that they received their best assistance from those who are not lily-white Englishmen!”

“Yes. I. Know,” Winston grates out. “I did not ask you to come here to argue with you, Saul. I asked you here so that I may apologize.”

Salazar raises both eyebrows in surprise. He’d suspected such, but hadn’t expected Winston to so readily admit it. “Why now?”

“I’m not fool enough to overlook the fact that I’m dying.” Winston retrieves a cigar from a drawer in his desk. “My doctors wouldn’t approve, but at this stage, things are what they are. Would you like one?”

Salazar shakes his head. He’s never minded the scent, but has avoided smoking since experiencing the long spans of boredom in the trenches of Europe during World War I, where there was often naught else to do. “No, thank you. What sort of apology are you looking to give?”

Winston waits until the cigar is properly lit, though he has to focus his efforts on the only side of his mouth that will obey him. “You were with me when the European Convention on Human Rights gathered in the Hague. You know just as well as I what it contains, how it says we’re to treat our fellow man.”

“I recall.” It had been a pleasing step forward, even if man has been a bit slow to be true to their own ratified laws. Some things never change, even though they should. “It was not long afterwards that you were pretending to be rather ignorant of the rights you’d helped draft.”

Winston grimaces at him. “You wouldn’t grant me absolution if I asked it, would you?”

“Winston, you’ve yet to ask anything of me aside from my presence and the offering of a cigar.”

“Hah!” Winston’s laugh is a rough bark with very little humor in it. “True enough. Please sit down, if you like. God knows I will not be standing up to join you.”

Salazar nods and chooses an armchair that looks to be almost entirely untouched. If he uses a shielding charm variant to make certain that no fiber or hair from his person, no fingerprints are left behind? That is no one’s business but his own. “Ask. We’re both aware that sunset is not such a good time for someone in your frame of mind.”

Winston blows smoke from his nose. “Rumors,” he mutters, but Salazar is not so sure. “I was wrong, Saul. You were correct to remind me—loudly—that Britain has _never_ been entirely white. That I shoved my head up my own arse in response is no one’s doing but my own. I’m sorry I let it ruin a friendship that ran the length of two world wars.”

Salazar looks at Winston in silence. Death makes a man say many things, and Winston will not be about for much longer. Less than a month, unless his Divination is failing him at last. However, Winston never really concerned himself with pretty words when he could simply blast his way through the opposition to attain his goals. Estefania and Nizar both would have despaired of the man’s methods of conducting politics.

What point is there in holding onto this grudge? Despite his later stupidity and foolishness, this man ultimately did more good than harm in the world. Winston may well be the last politician of his kind in Muggle Britain by now, the sort who understands that conservative and liberal thought can peacefully coexist—that Tories and Liberals were once people with only differences in opinions, not disparate enemies.

“I think I would be a hypocrite not to forgive you,” Salazar finally says. “Hatred is tiring, and I’ve so much else to be concerned with than words you were once foolish enough to believe. You have your absolution, Winston.”

“Thank you.” Winston smokes more of the cigar, both of them capable of sitting in silence and not feeling discomfited by it. The smoke pleasantly perfumes the room as long as one doesn’t stand up to linger in the cloud gathering beneath the ceiling. “Do you think Harry would grant me the same forgiveness?”

“Given the insult you once offered his wife?” Salazar shrugs. “You’d need to write to him and ask that yourself. Pour me a drink, you stingy bastard.”

Winston laughs again, the rattling humor of the old and infirm, before wheeling himself back to his desk. “My doctors won’t approve of this, either.”

“One hundred years ago, it was considered medicine. I’ll trust your sort of doctors when they’ve managed to decide the difference between a gopher hole, a mining shaft, and a cave without having to consult about it for a decade.”

Winston’s funeral marks the first time Salazar has seen Henry since November 1961. Henry hasn’t aged much, but there is a stoop to his shoulders that hints at potential growing infirmity. Salazar desperately hopes not; Henry is only seventy-one. British wizards are meant to live much longer lives.

Granted, it could also be the sign of a despairing mood. The bigoted Pure-bloods in the Wizengamot have been louder in how they fawn over Voldemort and his gods-cursed speeches.

“I wasn’t certain if you’d be here,” Salazar says when Henry joins him. They’re both lurking to the rear of St. Paul’s cathedral, but a microphone and speakers ensures that the crowd doesn’t miss a single word of Winston’s eulogy. “I didn’t know if the old bastard would live long enough to send word, or if he’d forget he needed to do so.”

“I saw him the first week of January. If I’d hesitated any longer, I’d have missed him entirely.” Henry lifts up onto his toes to see a bit higher over the crowd. “Is that Menzies delivering the eulogy?”

Salazar smiles. “That’s Sir Menzies, yes. Robert Menzies is here, as well.” It’s been entertaining in the evening to listen to the news, as it must be specified each time that one Menzies is the Prime Minister of Britain, and the other is the Prime Minister of Australia.

“He rose a bit in the world, then, if he left MI6 to become Britain’s Prime Minister,” Henry says of Sir Menzies. “I’ll be honest and say I’m surprised Her Majesty is present.”

Salazar nods. “The sign of a good monarch.” He’d like to have that himself again. One of the comforts that awaits him with Voldemort’s defeat is that the damned chiming magic of Spain’s empty throne won’t follow him into the afterlife.

Henry glances askance at Salazar. “You look tired.”

“Now that is a statement I expect I’ll be hearing more often as the years progress,” Salazar replies. “You do as well, Henry.”

“I feel as tired as I look,” Henry says wryly. “Have there been any other…incidents?”

“Have the fools detonated nuclear devices? Oh, most certainly.” Salazar hadn’t enjoyed the sensation of burning, poisoned earth beneath his feet, but none of the blasts have been strong enough to fell him. He’s angry that they continue to set off nuclear explosions; he’s angry that he must keep a Port Key in his pocket, just in case someone is fool enough to set off something like Tsar Bomba again. “It’s not been disabling, just disturbingly consistent.”

“Hmm.” Henry reaches into his jacket pocket and retrieves a photograph. When he passes it over, Salazar finds a colorful, moving magical picture of James Potter. The resemblance between himself and the boy are starting to become rather obvious. “Are you certain a distant blood relationship is all we share, Saul?”

Salazar grins and returns the photo. “Absolutely. Human bloodlines sometimes do very strange things. Besides, what did you expect of a child who was born under a serpent’s star?”

“I should’ve expected a bit more mischief, is what,” Henry says sourly. “He’s quite the handful.”

“No siblings?” Salazar asks, though he’s all but certain of the answer. There have been no more Potter birth announcements in the _Prophet_.

“They’ve tried. I imagine Monty and Euphemia will keep trying until it’s no longer physically possible.” Henry sighs. “I suspect that James will be an only child, just as his father was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Unless this was your doing, don’t apologize,” Henry refutes at once. “But if you know of a potion for increased fertility that Wizarding Britain is not aware of…”

“I’ll look into it,” Salazar promises, but doubts he will find any such thing. Too many Pure-bloods on this isle suffer the difficulty of bearing only one child per generation, and it has naught to do with the parents’ physical health. This is a deeper problem, possibly in the literal sense. “But think on this: in the past century, if a Pure-blood’s marriage first produces a girl, what happens?”

“They have to contend with marriage contracts before the girl has left behind the need for nappies,” Henry responds at once, but then he frowns. “They have more children. Most often, they are all daughters, but the parents have more children.”

“And if they first bear a son?”

“There are no more. Charles and I are among a very short list of Pure-bloods who are brothers, but Rose was born first.” Henry stares at him in consternation. “Why is there such a difference?”

Salazar lifts his shoulders in a vague shrug. “I’ve no idea, but if you pay attention, the pattern is there.”

“Dorea’s youngest sister, Walburga. She has two children now, both of them sons,” Henry ventures after a time. Sir Menzies’s eulogy is done, but there are more eulogies or prayers to come.

“But we’ve only the word of a bunch of mad banshees that the eldest boy was their _first_ child. Think also on Sirius and Hesper’s first three sons, as those two were _exactly_ the sort I would believe to easily do away with their first child had they dared to be a girl.”

Henry sighs. “You’re right. Most Pure-bloods are so secretive about their pregnancies, fearful of losing a child or somehow cursing them to be a Squib, that you never hear a word about it until there is a birth announcement in the newspaper. We’d never know the truth unless someone were to confess it. You’re certain it has not always been this way?”

“Godric’s first child was a boy.” Both of them had been, the child born to his wife and the child he accidentally conceived with another—to Godric’s consternation and Sedemai’s vast amusement. “He and his wife then had three daughters and another son. Rowena’s first child was a boy; she then had two daughters. Her surviving daughter Alicia then gave birth to a bloody horde of mixed-gendered children. My first child with my second wife was a boy, followed by two daughters. My sister birthed a daughter and then a son; my brother’s daughter bore twin sons, then two daughters.”

“Yes, all right. You’ve made your point,” Henry concedes. “I imagine if Harfang and Callidora hadn’t had twins, they would have one son, not two. The mixed marriages never have this difficulty, do they?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no,” Salazar answers. They spend the rest of the funeral service in quiet conversation, something Salazar has desperately missed.

“You could just tell them to go fuck atop the Door,” Nizar’s portrait suggests that evening after Salazar relates the conversation. “That would make up for any magic that might be lacking beneath their house.”

Salazar nearly spews tea from his nose. “Damn your timing,” he mutters, cleaning up the mess. “Nizar, I don’t know how to find Griffon’s Door. I also will not tell them to do something that is potentially foolish, even if I knew how to find this kingdom’s _other_ Doors. Besides, your father was an only child.”

“That we know of.”

Salazar rolls his eyes. “Any sibling of his would now be decidedly younger than your father, _hermanito_. They would be born next year at the earliest. Even if such a sibling were to be born next year, they would not be capable of fighting in the war. They would not even graduate Hogwarts until 1984, if not 1985.”

Nizar crosses his arms. “Do you really think Voldemort gives a fuck if he kills children?”

“No,” Salazar replies, feeling the heavy weight behind his words. Henry is right. He’s already tired, and the war is not yet begun. “But I still believe Henry to have the right of this matter.”

“Yeah,” Nizar’s portrait finally admits. “So do I.”

* * * *

After Winston’s funeral, Salazar quickly learns to tell people that he met Churchill once, during the war. He is technically not lying, but to say anything more too often entraps him in conversations of politics he’d prefer to avoid. When former Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon dies a few months later, Salazar faces the same blasted difficulty. He considers himself lucky to have escaped the man’s funeral service.

Salazar tries to distract himself with planning for what is to come, but there is a limit to what plans he can make, especially when he doesn’t know when the sodding war begins. This decade? The next? 1980? He has too many questions and no answers, because Wizarding Britain is sodding fucking _useless_.

“I did warn you,” Nizar’s portrait says.

“I DID NOT EXPECT THERE TO BE MORE THOROUGH ACCOUNTINGS OF THE FUCKING MINISTRY’S FOUNDING THAN THERE IS OF MOTHERFUCKING GRINDELWALD!” It’s been two full decades and still there is almost nothing at all on Wizarding bookstore shelves regarding Grindelwald’s rise, prominence, and fall.

“And the Ministry accountings are…fifty percent falsehoods, you said?”

Salazar buries his face in his hands. “More like seventy-five.”

While gathering the occasional hair from nondescript Muggles who dwell far away from northern Scotland, Little Hangleton, or London, Salazar has also been working at another task. His little brother once asked him to attempt to look after others, perhaps even to save them. Aside from his parents and the newly included elder Potters, Nizar’s portrait gave him two lists of names.

The longer list, unfortunately, is full of those who’ve already promised their service to Voldemort, magicians who will become Death Eaters. Most of those on the list who are British were educated in Slytherin House. Salazar truly did not think one of the tenets of his school’s House was blind, willful stupidity, and yet he keeps stumbling over it.

After walking among them, talking to them, listening, and sometimes applying a touch of Mind Magic, Salazar gives up on most of these Slytherin-educated adults in disgust. Martinus Flint has potential, though at the moment he is mired in stupidity. Lucretia Lestrange, wife of Patrician, also bears watching, though she is terrified of her husband as well as her own sons, which never bodes well. Alberta Rookwood is always on her husband’s arm, but Voldemort’s speeches make her feel ill, and she maintains the appearance of one who’d much prefer to be elsewhere.

He doesn’t see evidence of the Dark Mark. There is a chance it doesn’t yet exist, but right now, why would it? Everyone still stands tall and honest in their beliefs, whether they follow an ethical path or a mad one.

 _When?_ Salazar wonders one day, staring at Voldemort in apparent worship while lounging against a Diagon Alley street lamp that still relies on oil and flame. When did Voldemort make those other Horcruxes? Only someone who has created four soul jars, and given so much of himself to each one, would have the appearance that Tom Marvolo Riddle bears now.

How in the bloody hell do others not _notice?_

Once upon a time, Tom Riddle was a handsome man, if a bit thin. Now he is thinner still, and would probably appear to be ill if one were to strip him of those tailored robes to view what was beneath. His black hair is lank, with all the reflectivity of coal dust. His eyes shine with jewel-bright, feverish intensity, which, set against his pale skin, still causes far too many to swoon. Salazar will readily admit that there are some aspects of humanity he has never understood; the desire to bed someone who would look upon you the entire time as if you were a worthless insect is still near the top of what has become, over the centuries, a rather short list.

Tom Marvolo Riddle no longer so strictly resembles his Muggle father but for the addition of ancient Cadmus Peverell’s eyes. As an adult of thirty-eight, Voldemort looks very much like a Gaunt as they’d appeared in their prime. Not that the family’s pinnacle during the early 1700s had made them individuals Salazar wished to associate with. That lot would have been most appreciative of their descendant’s vile behavior.

 _The death of your Muggle family, that was your first Horcrux. The second was Myrtle Warren’s murder, the creation of that damned diary._ Salazar managed to track down Hepzibah’s aging house-elf, Hokey, and ask her questions that didn’t trigger bouts of confusion. In that manner, he learned that Tom Riddle used to be a frequent visitor of Hepzibah Smith before her poisoning, and only two objects were missing from her household: Helga’s beloved golden cup, and a gold locket. If it were not for the unmarred state of Hepzibah Smith’s body in the aftermath of that theft, Salazar would readily believe Voldemort arrogant enough to use her murder to have made one of those objects into a Horcrux—but not only did Voldemort not kill her, he wasn’t even present when Hepzibah Smith died. Salazar is convinced that those two stolen items are Horcruxes number three and number four, but there isn’t even a whisper of other murders within Wizarding Britain in that decade. Riddle sought his victims elsewhere.

Salazar idly wonders if Voldemort is aware that his physical appearance will continue to deteriorate, that he will lose the physical beauty that charms so many to his side. It will happen faster still when he makes that fifth Horcrux. Salazar recalls from his viewing of events in the water that Voldemort uses his rage at Albus Dumbledore to create his next Horcrux, but the when, and the what? Those questions remain unanswered.

Despite the lack of known victims, Voldemort must have made his third and fourth Horcruxes soon after stealing them from Hepzibah Smith. It takes time for the body to physically reflect the changes caused when one is magically shoving chunks of their own self into a magical jar. If Voldemort had used only slivers, perhaps he would have retained most of his vitality, but he seems to prefer grand gestures for sacrifice, even if the sacrifice is himself.

The other intriguing question is this: _why?_ If immortality were all he sought, one Horcrux would be enough. Two, if one was paranoid; two well-hidden soul jars would ensure Voldemort never aged, never died, and he would not look to be suffering a wasting illness. Salazar already knows the bastard does not stop at four. Once Voldemort attacks his brother, there will be six, a soul split into seven pieces. That goes beyond a simple desire for survival. That speaks of terror.

Salazar finds hairs from the most unassuming, unmentionable Muggle he can find in a day’s search, purchases drab but well-pressed clothing in the correct size, and returns to Tom Marvolo Riddle’s former orphanage in the guise of a nondescript woman. Cindy Jones is from a fictional law firm and searching for her new client, Merope Gaunt, or any other potential descendants, regarding a small inheritance from a fictional Muggle bank.

Wool Orphanage has a new director, a Ms. Warrington. She treats Salazar as a fellow professional, dresses well, moves with swift economy—Warrington is business-focused, not children-focused. The former Mrs. Cole had not been children-focused, either. Does this blasted orphanage repel anyone who would work here and care for these children?

“I’m sorry to inform you that Merope Gaunt Riddle died in 1926, according to the records I found when you telephoned,” Ms. Warrington informs him after they seat themselves in her office. There is a wooden rod leaning casually in one corner that has a specific tint to the wood in the center, as if it’s struck the same surface repeatedly on numerous occasions.

 _Records you are not actually supposed to be telling me of,_ Salazar thinks, but privacy only seems to be a concern when it’s convenient. “That’s unfortunate. I couldn’t find records of any descendants, so it would mean the inheritance is returned to my bank.” Salazar feigns as much excitement as he can when he wants to curse the person he’s speaking to.

Warrington hits these children. She uses that cane upon them often.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you, Cindy. I may call you Cindy, yes?” Warrington plows on without waiting for affirmation. “Mrs. Riddle died just after birthing a son. Tom Riddle spent his entire childhood in this orphanage, though like many of those who depart as adults, he didn’t exactly leave us with a means of contacting him afterwards.”

“Hmm. I wonder if there are any incidents I could use to further track him. It’s very important I find him. This account can’t be reclaimed by my employers if a living descendent is out there,” Salazar frets, but it’s easy to fret when it comes to Voldemort. “Was Tom Riddle ever injured as a child, something that would have required a doctor’s care?”

“Ah—no. He remained remarkably free of injuries during his stay here, according to his files.” Ms. Warrington pauses, and for the first time the professional mask slips. She looks disturbed. “A child died in his presence.”

Salazar feels his blood turn chill. “Oh, how awful. What happened?”

“The records weren’t very clear. Tom never told anyone what happened. He said he didn’t know, and there do not seem to have been any other witnesses. The director at the time believed the child had done no wrong. After all, what five-year-old could crush a nine-year-old’s ribs?”

 _Magic. Accidental or otherwise, Voldemort killed for the first time when he was five years old._ Salazar would like to find the closest pub and immediately get very, very pissed. “That’s frightening. I suppose if there was an inquiry—”

“No, unfortunately not. It was 1932, the victim was a child without family…” Ms. Warrington shrugs, polite smile on her face. “It would have been considered a waste of resources. Most unfortunate.”

“Indeed,” Salazar agrees, and then casts the Deflection Charm upon her before she can recognize a wand is being pointed at her nose. “If anyone asks, you don’t know anything about Tom Marvolo Riddle, Merope Gaunt, or a child’s mysterious death. Cindy was mistaken and is searching for someone else.”

“Of course,” Ms. Warrington repeats in a daze, still affected by the memory-altering charm as it follows the instructions given. “I’m sorry I could not be of more assistance.”

“That’s all right. I’ll show myself out. Thank you for your time.”

Before he leaves, Salazar curses that fucking cane. Every time Warrington strikes another child, it won’t be the young one who feels the pain. It will rebound upon herself, the strength of it doubled with every strike she continues to make.

“So, Voldemort killed someone when he was five. That doesn’t actually surprise me, Sal,” Nizar’s portrait says that evening.

“No, though it would be interesting to discover if it was deliberate.”

“Why?” Nizar asks.

“Because it would have been Voldemort’s first conscious memory of experiencing another’s death. It might be helpful to discover if that incident helped craft his fear of dying.”

Nizar snorts. “Or it might be bloody useless. Knowing your enemy is sound tactical advice, but sometimes there is no why, Sal. Sometimes people are just fucking terrifying all on their own.”

On 18th March, Salazar is distracted from Voldemort’s irritating existence when the Soviets win another part of the Space Race as the first human cosmonaut “walks” in outer space for the very first time. The broadcast is a captured Russian signal, which reminds Salazar that he’s forgotten how to speak yet another language, but one doesn’t need language to understand the import of what’s happening.

“ _Mis dioses_ ,” Salazar whispers.

“Okay, yeah. That is definitely amazing,” Nizar agrees. “The United States is probably losing their collective shit because the Soviets did it first.”

“Please tell me that the Americans and the Soviets eventually stop believing that everything is a competition to the death between them.”

Nizar makes a disbelieving noise. “What, we’re back to trying to rely on my shoddy history education? That would not be helpful. Besides, I have no idea.”

“Your recollections are not entirely useless,” Salazar reminds the portrait. Nizar just rolls his eyes in response.

The cosmonaut’s name, Salazar discovers from the later press announcements out of the USSR, is Alexei Leonov. He spent at least twelve minutes in outer space. Salazar heard the event through a static-filled radio signal, but the press announcement somehow makes it _real._ He gets very sloshed to celebrate this human success. It’s a bit of good news, human progress for the right reasons, and he desperately needs that right now.

Dorea and Charles visit by Floo after Beltane. Dorea is in tears, and even Charles looks upset. “What’s wrong?”

“We’ve just been to Lycoris Black’s funeral,” Charles explains while Dorea cries against her husband’s shoulder. “It was a bloody nightmare.”

Salazar gives them both a good bit of wine to sip on, poor comfort when they’re mourning the loss of yet another Black with a sense of decency. Lycoris was only sixty-one, and yet natural causes— _age!_ —were determined to cause his death. Worse, Orion and Walburga argued during the funeral that Lycoris should be “properly” listed on his tombstone as female, as he’d been a girl before using magical means to switch genders as a teenager. Arcturus Black III heard that absolute nonsense, turned around, and punched Orion Black in the face. Nothing more was said of gender.

“Oh, now that’s a moment I would love to have witnessed,” Salazar says of the blow. “Walburga must have been quite the sight.”

“Walburga was occupied,” Charles replies, grinning as he glances at Dorea.

Dorea blushes pink-violet even as she dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I slapped my sister and told her I raised her better than to behave like that,” she mutters under her breath. Salazar can’t help it; he laughs. They spend the rest of the evening toasting Lycoris’s memory until the bottle is gone.

* * * *

Nizar’s second list, the shorter one, is much easier on Salazar, as it involves very few idiotic Slytherins. It’s also a bit odd to contemplate, as Salazar remembers his brother’s _Recordari_ scrolls. Those were captured images of grown adults, but right now, the people Nizar thinks of as family are all still children.

Remus John Lupin, born 10th March 1960, is easy to find. His is the only magical family with that name in Britain unless one faffs off directly to Ireland. The boy’s father, Lyall Lupin, married a Welsh woman who often calls herself a Muggle to avoid the more denigrated label of Squib.

Salazar spends about an hour watching a flush-cheeked, blond-haired lad run around the back garden belonging to a woman who is quite obviously his grandmother, given their shared green eyes and that particular nose. The fresh scars marring the five-year-old boy’s face stand out in stark relief. They’ll fade over time, but right now, it’s obvious the damage was caused not by a clawed paw, not by a hand, but something in-between. His grandmother, who has a bit of magic of her own, does not shun him, nor does his non-magical grandfather.

The acceptance the boy receives from his grandparents and parents is miraculous; werewolves in Britain are most often cast out of their families and left to fend for themselves, no matter their age. Instead, Remus Lupin looks set to have a pleasant childhood…or as pleasant as it can be when one is cursed to become a werewolf with every full moon. Salazar has no idea what became of his brother’s crafted potion that made life easier on Galiena, but in Britain, the U.S., and in most of Europe, there currently exists nothing at all to ease a werewolf’s life. Salazar can’t remember the formula, either. He only recalls that it involves violets.

“I’ll be buggered in a most unfortunate manner,” Salazar says to himself as he puts together Remus’s Welsh lineage. Hope Pryce, only daughter of Eglantine Pryce, granddaughter of Anna Grace Pryce, who happens to be Euphemia’s aunt.

“Wait. Remus and my father are related?” Nizar asks in disbelief. “No one ever mentioned that!”

“And gods know why, because it should never have been so easily overlooked!” Salazar paces back and forth in his sitting room, down the hall, and back again. He should possibly consider enlarging the Willow House, if only so he has more room to pace while in a temper. “They are not only second cousins by a marriage, they’re second cousins by their great-grandparents! Euphemia is first cousin to Remus’s grandmother, a woman named Eglantine Pryce, married to Edmund, who was intelligent enough to allow his wife to retain the family’s magical name instead of his Muggle name. They have a single daughter named Hope, born the month and year that World War II began. She is Remus’s mother.”

He should have pressed for more information during Gwydion Pryce’s funeral—the name of the daughter, the granddaughter, feign curiosity about the wedding that took precedence over the funeral, anything! It’s now too late to ask Lleu and Anna Pryce. He died in November 1961, when Salazar was too much of a wreck to attend a funeral, and she died in 1962, an event he didn’t witness. Euphemia was not told nor invited; by the time she found out her aunt was dead, it was too late to do anything but visit a grave marker.

“Second cousins, and easy to find, at that.” Nizar finally shrugs. “Well, I wanted to know if Dumbledore did it on purpose—putting me with the Dursleys, I mean. That certainly answers _that_ question.”

“And raises several others,” Salazar mutters. Nizar said that no one knew Remus Lupin was a werewolf aside from the future Marauders, most likely Lily Potter, Dumbledore, and perhaps the school’s matron. Even if Dumbledore truly believed that the sacrificial blood magic protecting Harry Potter from Voldemort had to be reinforced by acceptance from a blood relative of Lily, there is no reason that the child could not have spent part of his year with Remus Lupin…unless Dumbledore’s claimed two weeks per year was not belief, but deliberate falsehood.

Euphemia had politely couched her words, but she strongly implied that Professor Dumbledore always made her feel vaguely uncomfortable—of course, she was a Ravenclaw at school, and Nizar is bitterly certain that Albus Dumbledore favors Gryffindors above _everyone_ else. Elizabetha is ambivalent, but she’s never had to cope with the man beyond a few polite social gatherings. “Euphemia, Henry, Charles, and Dorea already dislike Albus Dumbledore. Monty was a Gryffindor, and yet he doesn’t trust Dumbledore, either. This is not helping anything,” Salazar growls, and goes to find the next person on his list.

Peter Pettigrew is a bit shocking in how normal he looks and acts. He has ashy brown hair with sun-bleached tips, pale brown eyes blended with yellows and reds, pale skin, and most often runs around with a wide, happy smile on his face.

 _Why should he look any different?_ Salazar chides himself. The lad is barely five years old.

In the case of his family, two Wilkes sisters distantly related to the main branch of the Pettigrew family married its two sons, older Clarence and younger Leigh. Peter’s mother is Edith Pettigrew, wife of Clarence and older sister of Enid Pettigrew. Enid and Leigh have a daughter named Marguerite…who just graduated Hogwarts, turned eighteen, and looks to be on the verge of accepting a marriage proposal from Felix Davis. At age twenty, Davis is already a pledged Knight of Walpurgis. That, it seems, is to be his first clue, and makes Salazar look more closely at Peter’s household.

A cousin of Edith and Enid, William Wilkes, turns up often to visit, but it isn’t his cousins he comes to see. He spends most of his time with their husbands in outdated Wizarding drinking houses, the sort that refuse to admit females of any sort. When it isn’t the “gentlemen’s” clubs, it’s the three of them standing within listening distance of the crowd of idiots in Diagon Alley, who Voldemort draws in much the same way flies are drawn to rotten meat.

Peter Pettigrew has a mother and an aunt who are not Death Eaters. His father, his uncle, and his closest known adult cousin are charmed by Voldemort already. After a few more days of observing them, Salazar becomes certain that Enid and Edith have no idea what sort of foolishness their husbands are about to become involved in. He suspects Enid Wilkes Pettigrew would hand them their arses if she learned of it.

Or perhaps Peter’s male relatives never attempt to convert him, and Peter Pettigrew’s later treachery is all of his own making. For now, though, he’s a little boy who doesn’t appear to have a malicious bone in his body. His betrayal of the Potter family will also be a mystery until it happens, and its timing may not work in Salazar’s favor.

Attempting to view Sirius Black at this point is a laughable concept. His family won’t even let their Heir out of doors until they’re certain he’s capable of behaving himself to their standards, which means Salazar might not even see the boy until he’s boarding the Hogwarts Express in 1971. Sirius will be six in November; Regulus will be four, and thus two years below his brother at Hogwarts.

There is nothing in the Ministry records regarding a pregnancy that would predate Sirius Black III’s birth, and after some very careful digging and bribery, finds that there are no medical records, either. Either Walburga tapped into the vast Black wealth to make certain any healer’s visits were left undocumented, or she, like Cedrella and Septimus, became one of the lucky exceptions.

“I’d go with bribery, personally,” Nizar’s portrait says, and hesitates. “Sirius never mentioned having a brother.” He appears saddened by that.

“Death Eater, do you think?”

Nizar shakes his head. “I don’t know. Given that part of the family, it’s possible…but it’s equally possible that Azkaban fucked with Sirius’s head so badly that he forgot he ever had a brother at all.”

“Stop trying to incite me to tear down that horrific pile of stone on that fucking island, little brother. I don’t need that much history exploding in my face, especially when it involves those gods-forsaken Dementors.”

When Salazar returned to England in the 1600s, that had been the most unpleasant discovery of several centuries. Not only did the magicians of Britain have a new prison that was more of a tribute to depravity than the non-magical were capable of, but it was guarded by the mysterious creatures Nizar had always been able to vividly describe, but never find. Salazar still doesn’t know what the hell they are aside from terrifying.

Severus Snape is almost as difficult to catch sight of as Sirius Black, but it isn’t because his family is hard to locate. In an England full of Snape families, the Latin nature of his name and magical nature of his mother’s family leads Salazar right to the village of Cokeworth.

Not that his mother can be said to have a family any longer aside from her husband, her husband’s family, and her son. Severus Prince Snape’s grandparents publicly disowned Eileen Ruth Prince and disinherited her for the _crime_ of marrying a Muggle man named Tobias Joseph Snape. With that act, those idiots ended the line of magical Jewish Princes in Britain. There won’t be any imports from Europe, either; the French branches of the magical lines were entirely wiped out by the Nazis and Grindelwald.

The elusive nature of this small family frustrates him. Tobias’s schedule is erratic; Eileen rarely leaves the house; young Severus most often prefers to flit along like a shadow, unseen and unnoticed, as much as possible. After he compensates his spying to accommodate people who are antisocial and uninterested in being out-of-doors no matter their location, it’s easier to discover just what sort of household the future Head of Slytherin House comes from.

Eileen Prince and Tobias Snape look to be well-matched, but not in a way that is the least bit healthy. She appears to hate everything and everyone around her, husband and son included. He is too often pissed to notice her hatred. Salazar wonders for a brief time if Tobias drinks so much, so often, as an escape from her perpetual hatred, but when he is sober, Tobias reveals that he hates her with a shared fierce intensity.

Tobias also strikes his son, whether or not drink is involved. Salazar has to turn away before he murders someone for doing such to a five-year-old. His sense of precognition is murmuring at him that he cannot intervene, and he has to listen, lest he fuck things up entirely.

With his justifiably reclusive nature, Severus Snape thus earns several days of Salazar’s time. He wants to see more of what the boy is like before life as a spy against Voldemort hardens his heart.

Severus reminds Salazar of the old Britons with his pale skin, black hair, and black eyes that often pick up the sheen of the full spectrum of light. The boy likes plants, Salazar notes, but that is because Severus already knows what plants can do for him when a cauldron is involved. “Oh, you start young, don’t you?” Salazar murmurs, delighted by the sight of natural magical talent on display. Any neighbor peering over a fence would see a small boy in unfortunate clothing playing with plants, water, a pot, and a stick, but that is a potion forming, and the child isn’t using a recipe of any sort that Salazar knows. Whatever it is, Severus also chose the right sort of stick. If one is going to put anything that is not glass or metal into a cauldron, bark-stripped oak is an excellent choice.

Severus scoops up the completed potion in a little phial of capped glass and stares at, a real smile on his tiny pale face. Salazar still doesn’t recognize the potion, but he and the boy both know that whatever it is, it’s _right_.

The boy pockets the capped sample of the potion, then looks down at the cauldron. He’s fully aware that he cannot just dump a working potion onto the ground. Severus seems to think about it before he glances back over his shoulder, sees no movement from his shabby house, then picks up his simple cauldron by its handle and runs from the back garden.

Salazar follows, all but led by his nose by his own curiosity. At first, he worries that Severus will dump a potion into the river, but that polluted water might find the potion to be an improvement. It’s a children’s play park that Severus goes to, one quite close to his house. There are no children present, given that the chains of every swing are solid lines of rust.

Severus regards the swings from several angles before he stands to one side of the four swings hanging from the bar. With a mighty heave from a five-year-old, he flings the contents of the cauldron at the rusted chains.

“Oh, that is—fuck me sideways, how the _hell_ did you do that?” Salazar whispers in angry disbelief as the rust begins to flake off the chains. The boy isn’t dissolving useless swings. He’s stripping their chains of corrosion, revealing the dull shine of new steel that hid beneath layers of rust.

Severus Snape is grinning, his black eyes bright, everything wrong with his home and family forgotten. Salazar truly wishes there was someone else present in that moment, someone who was free to tell that child that he’d just done something amazing.

“Wow,” Nizar’s portrait says later.

“I still have no idea what he put in that potion!”

“No, not that.” Nizar frowns. “Okay, that also, but I meant—except for the fact that it’s his parents who treat him so badly, I’m a bit concerned about mirrored childhoods, here.”

“ _Hermanito,_ Severus Snape is not a child in a position of forced servitude, imprisonment, and deliberate starvation.”

The portrait glares at him and stalks off, disappearing from the frame. Over one thousand years, and still even his little brother’s portrait can sometimes be tetchy about certain truths—usually if he’s discovered another child suffering through similar circumstances.

Minerva McGonagall, future Head of Gryffindor, is still involved in the M.L.E. He tends to now avoid that lot, as they always want to know his name, his business, and his origins, and Salazar is of the mood to give them nothing. He has no idea why McGonagall turns from the Ministry and sets her sights on Hogwarts, but it must be soon. When Dumbledore takes over from aging Armando Dippet, the school will likely need a new Transfiguration teacher. She also doesn’t seem to be interested in dating. Salazar has to inform his ridiculous heart that there will be no pining after McGonagall unless she is both interested in such things and _single_ after Hallowe’en 1995.

Lucius Malfoy, future father of a blond-haired lad named Draco, is already familiar thanks to Abraxus and Delphina’s irregular social dealings with Henry. The boy is now eleven, but was born too late to attend Hogwarts this year. Lucius is already so obnoxious that he makes Abraxus Malfoy appear civilized. He isn’t parroting his parents’ opinions on blood purity; Lucius Malfoy believes it utterly.

Good gods. Salazar is starting to feel sympathy for ten-year-old Narcissa Black, who will one day be marrying that arrogant and genocidal piece of work. It’s bad enough that she and her older sister Andromeda must deal with Bellatrix Black. The child is only eleven, yet already appears to be insane. Nizar knew nothing about Draco’s aunts aside from a vague mention of Bellatrix once upon a time, so they know what Bellatrix’s fate will be—her insanity certainly fits the profile of Bellatrix Lestrange—but Andromeda is a mystery they would both like to solve.

Arthur Allectus Weasley requires no searching whatsoever. Salazar has been familiar with the ginger middle child of Septimus and Cedrella for many years now. Unless they also had a secret girl before giving birth to Arthur’s older brother, the three boys are one of the _very_ few exceptions to the Pure-blood “curse” of having too few children. In every encounter Salazar has had with Arthur in the past, he’s had the keen gaze of an intelligent lad with a good heart.

Molly Weasley could have been a difficulty, as there are several women in Britain bearing the name. Granted, Arthur is only sixteen and certainly not yet wed; finding an unwed ginger _witch_ named Molly of age to attend Hogwarts is much easier. Molly is currently a ginger Prewett of the same school year as Arthur, and both are Gryffindors. Rumor from the Prewetts is that the two are already dating, something that riles half the family and soothes the other. Nizar’s portrait mutters that her family name explains a lot about how much the Weasley children of his acquaintance had hated Mafalda Prewett in Slytherin, a feeling that had apparently been mutual.

“I didn’t know Mister Weasley and Sirius were that closely related,” Nizar muses. “I mean, I realize it now, but it wasn’t even mentioned when I was a kid.”

“I believe they’re second cousins, but the Black Family tree is such a shambles that even the Ministry seems to have given up in despair,” Salazar replies. “Whereas Walburga Black and Orion Black, the parents of your godfather, are fucking first cousins. Literally.” Salazar does his best not to think on that but to hope Sirius and Regulus Black have the proper number of fingers and toes.

Nizar rolls his eyes. “People are absolutely grand, aren’t they?”

“Sometimes.” Salazar holds up the little pocket-sized notebook he uses for copying relevant details and discoveries, which is waiting for future spouses and children to be filled in for this batch of names. “I didn’t tell you before. Arthur Weasley has an older brother named Bilius, and a younger brother named Ignatius.”

Nizar raises his eyebrows in clear concern. “I didn’t know that. I’ve never seen a picture of anyone in that house aside from Arthur, Molly, the children…” He pauses and starts digging through recorded memories again. “No, hold on. There is a portrait in the Burrow that is most likely Septimus and Cedrella, though I think only Cedrella was still alive at the time. Ron mentioned his grandmother, and not in the past tense, but I don’t think he meant Molly’s parents.”

Salazar makes a rude gesture in regards to the mention of William and Geneva Crouch Prewett. If the fools weren’t still confusing _neutral_ with _avoid_ , he’d have known of Molly and her family already.

“One more photograph—twins that weren’t George and Fred. They looked alike, but not quite. Either the one got into a magnificent brawl and never saw a healer afterwards, or they’re not identical twins, merely fraternal.”

“Molly has older twin brothers,” Salazar tells him. “You’re right; they look a great deal alike, but they’re not identical. Their names are—”

“Gideon and Fabian,” Nizar’s portrait bursts out, wide-eyed. “Oh, shit. George and Fred have their names. Ron has Bilius as his second name. Percy’s second name is Ignatius. William has Arthur…Charlie has…” The portrait squeezes his eyes shut. “Oh, that’s…bugger. I don’t recall. At least Ginny just had Molly as her second name. I’ve never met these people, Sal. They weren’t even mentioned in front of me.”

“War dead.” Salazar breathes out a sigh. “We’re uncovering deaths that have yet to happen. I hate it, little brother.”

“Me, too.”

The Americans finally manage their own spacewalk on 3rd June. A man named Ed White spends twenty-one minutes tethered to a Gemini spacecraft. Errors and malfunctions nearly kill both pilots of that mission, but they succeed. Salazar again drinks to their success, as something should go right this year for someone who is not fucking Voldemort.

Bartemius Crouch Senior is now a highly ranked official within the M.L.E. with the obvious goal of becoming Minister for Magic. His son, however, is most often in the company of his mother, Anna, who has turned meek and frail in the years since Salazar last saw her. He worries about her health, and wonders how Bartemius Crouch treats his wife in the privacy of their home.

Toddler Barty Junior is three years old. He has a sleek curtain of fine brown hair; as he runs, it flies back to reveal reddened cheeks still rounded by infancy. It’s hard for Salazar to find anger in his heart towards one who is still so innocent, no matter what they will one day do to his brother.

He has a different problem when it comes to those such as Hermione Granger. Until she’s born and named in September 1979, he will not be locating her. There are many Muggle Granger families in England, and a rather baffling number of them are dentists. Neville Longbottom is another of his brother’s concerns, but Salazar is almost certain that young Frank Longbottom will be the boy’s father. Algernon either prefers men, prefers no one at all, or is too preoccupied by amphibians to court and wed anyone. The oldest of the Weasley children, Bill, won’t be born for several years yet.

 _You trusted so few,_ Salazar thinks, grieved. Even accounting for the seven children Arthur and Molly will eventually have, Nizar’s list of family he’d claimed as a child is so very short.

The one driving him mental, the one he can’t find, is the girl who will one day become Lily Potter. Salazar doesn’t know if they’re too young, or if he’s searching in the wrong place, but seeking out two Muggle-born sisters named Petunia and Lily should not be this fucking difficult.

Giving up on the sisters for now, Salazar concentrates on finding Vernon Dursley. Vernon and his family may or may not provide clues for locating Lily and Petunia, but it will certainly tell Salazar what Nizar’s uncle was like as a young man.

The Dursley family still resides in Surrey, though considering Little Whinging’s population and housing, Chaldon is rather empty in comparison. Perhaps that is what made Little Whinging so appealing to a man like Vernon Dursley, or perhaps it will be his future wife who chooses their home.

After poking about in their village, he’s now certain that Vernon Dursley and Petunia are not yet acquainted. Petunia’s future husband lives with his older sister Marjorie and their father, but not their mother, of which there is no sign. Vernon Dursley is thirteen to Marjorie’s fifteen; both children are very tall, broad-shouldered, black-haired and watery-eyed; their skin is flushed the same sorts of red shades as a lifelong alcoholic. Vernon and Marjorie strongly resemble their father, though Howard has blond hair instead of black. Howard Dursley is a massive beast of a man, one who seems to enjoy having an angry, witless intelligence to match.

Salazar can’t find anyone in Chaldon who is willing to discuss the missing wife of Howard Dursley. It isn’t information he necessarily needs, but this flat refusal is irritating. Salazar despises mysteries, especially when it involves someone who will eventually be charged with the guardianship of his little brother. He wants to know if there is something in Vernon Dursley’s past that will make him act the way he does.

That, however, is an astounding negative. “Vernon? Marge?” Chaldon villager and schoolteacher Marcus shakes his head. “Those two have been sturdy little bullies since they entered primary school, Mister Luiz. I’ve heard it’s not gotten any better now that they’re off attending Smeltings and St. Mary’s, respectively. There wasn’t much hope for them even before Mrs. Dursley…well.” Marcus frowns. “Why is it you’re wanting to know so much about the family? There is no diamond in that lot, and that’s a certainty.”

“They’re related to an adopted member of my family,” Salazar replies. “I’ve been trying to help him uncover more about them, even if all I can grant him afterwards is disappointment.”

“Well…I suppose it can’t hurt, then,” Marcus decides. “Her leaving is treated as a bigger scandal than it is, really.”

“Oh?”

“The biggest shock about it all was that no one expected it. No one in Chaldon, and definitely not Howard. He was dazed for days afterward, hardly spoke a word. When we asked Howard what happened between him and Mary, he says they argued, and…” Marcus grimaces. “He never admitted to it, but I saw the kids, and how they flinched those first few weeks if Howard so much as raised his arms. He hit her, Mister Luiz, or he had been doing so for quite a while. Mary decided she’d finally had enough of it, packed up, called for a car, and left.”

“She didn’t take the children?” Salazar asks, genuinely concerned.

Marcus shakes his head. “Not then. I think she knew Howard wouldn’t let them leave. The rub of it all is that I think she should’ve tried. If she had, she might still be alive.”

Salazar’s eyes widen with no artifice needed. “What happened to her?”

“Mary had been traveling back and forth between here and Woking. She’d gotten herself a new place, new job, steady pay, and the car to go with it all, but the court that sees to child custody cases for Chaldon is over in Oxted. She had to work that last morning, so she was heading through the Scilly Isles going south to Oxted. Rumor was that she was going to be awarded custody that very day. Instead, someone who wasn’t local lost control of a lorry, and…”

“A bloody car crash.” Salazar briefly closes his eyes. “And I apologize for the pun; it wasn’t intentional.”

“I believe you, and besides, it’s true. It was a bloody crash, and not just her, either. Shut down the Isles and part of the Bypass for half the day while they cleaned things up.”

“I recall that now,” Salazar realizes. “It made the news. 1962, around about November?”

Marcus nods. “That’s exactly right. Three dead, a mess of injured motorists, and two orphaned kids in a village that didn’t rate a mention in the news. That’s the whole sordid mess of it, and it’s not even sordid. It’s just sad.”

“Do you think Marjorie and young Vernon would be less the bullying sort if she’d lived?”

Marcus takes a few minutes to think about it, most likely dwelling on a number of primary school years in which he witnessed their behavior. “Maybe if she’d stayed, or if Mary hadn’t died in that accident and moved both the kids with her to Woking,” he says. “But even if she’d stayed, Howard is a complete bastard and a brute, Mister Luiz. To be honest, I don’t know how he could lay off the violence and the drinking long enough to convince someone like Mary to be his wife. Those two kids have the example of Howard’s fists to emulate, and…well, some kids outgrow it and learn better. Some never do. The only thing that’ll tell us what those two will be like is time.”

Salazar nods, thanks him, and praises Marcus’s flowers—which makes the teacher beam with pride—before he walks away. Chaldon is a peaceful bit of land, mindful of the Surrey he knew when he and Nizar were both young. It’s the sort of peace he could use right now.

Time won’t make Vernon Dursley a better person. If anything, it makes him worse. Marjorie, as well, given some of the stories Nizar’s portrait has told him.

Salazar wonders what Petunia is like right now. Is she an innocent? A slender twig of a child already learning to hate? Does Lily love her sister as much as she will one day love her child?

Gods, but he has too many fucking questions. He almost wishes Voldemort would start his war right now, if only so Salazar has the distraction of trying to figure out how to save a vast number of fools from their own idiocy. He has ideas, but until the opportunity is before him, he won’t know if the method will work unless it succeeds or fails.

With that done, and no more names to concern himself with, Salazar focuses his attention on finding the history of a man he’s been curious about for centuries. That doesn’t go well, either. All of Salazar’s attempts to uncover the whole of Albus Dumbledore’s past grants him a brick wall.

The records in the Ministry are sealed. Not even Salazar’s past association with Leonard grants him any sort of access. What little he finds tells him that Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore had parents who moved the family from northern Scotland all the way down to Godric’s Hollow when their younger sister took ill. Salazar can’t find her name, or the name of her mother, or even their blasted father, who is noted only to have had a trial before the Wizengamot for unknown reasons. No one seems to know the results of this trial, or if they recall, they’re not willing to speak of it.

It takes a great deal of frustrating work to discover that these mysterious parents and the ailing sister all died before Albus graduated from Hogwarts. Aberforth didn’t return after Easter break to finish his fifth year, and never bothered to sit his O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s at the Ministry. Such was common in those days, so it was never looked at askance. Aberforth still did well enough in life to run that successful pit of an inn in Hogsmeade, and that was with an unfortunate rumor following him around regarding goats.

Salazar is still otherwise staring down an unyielding brick wall. No names, no burial listings—he can’t even find any newspaper clippings regarding the Dumbledore family before Albus Dumbledore’s graduation from Hogwarts. Whatever “sad tale” it was that Henry mentioned, someone meant for that tale to be forgotten.

“You found _nothing_ of them? At all?” Henry is surprised to hear that when he meets with Salazar in London. If he has other concerns regarding Salazar’s search regarding the Dumbledore family’s origins, he doesn’t say. “That’s so very odd. I only remember that Mister Dumbledore, their father, never came back to Godric’s Hollow after leaving one day, and my parents wouldn’t discuss why he departed.”

Salazar finds that intriguing, if unsettling. “Would you now tell me something of their sad tale? I promise I’ll not be airing anyone’s befouled laundry.”

“There isn’t much I could say and be certain of the details, but a few things…” Henry presses his lips together. “Gellert Grindelwald already knew who I was when you introduced us in Nurmengard.”

Salazar raises both eyebrows. “I’d wondered at his lack of curiosity, but assumed he’d been keeping his eyes on the British press.”

“Oh, most likely that, too.” Henry puts his hands into his trouser pockets and looks at the water flowing through St. James Park, which reflects myriad colors in the afternoon sunlight. “In June, when I was five years old, Professor Bathilda Bagshot’s great-nephew came to live with her in Godric’s Hollow. I didn’t know why at the time. I later assumed, given his foreign name and accent, that he might have been trying to become a British citizen.”

“A reasonable assumption,” Salazar says, though Grindelwald never sought citizenship anywhere aside from his birthplace.

“Madam Bagshot hosted a bit of a party for the wizarding families in the area to introduce her great-nephew to the village. When my parents decided to attend, they allowed myself and Rose to accompany them, thinking it the sort of welcoming party meant for children. They were wrong; Gellert Grindelwald was already seventeen, and certainly no child.”

“He terrified you.” It isn’t a guess.

Henry nods. “Very much so, but I was polite. I shook Grindelwald’s hand after greeting Professor Bagshot, who taught history at Hogwarts before retiring to allow Professor Binns to take on the role. The moment I could do so without causing offence, I dashed off to the toilet and scrubbed my hand until it was red and raw, Saul. Seventeen, and Grindelwald was already foul—and as of that party, friends with Albus Dumbledore.”

“That’s how you knew,” Salazar realizes. “That’s why you knew Albus Dumbledore would be the ringer we needed to defeat Grindelwald.”

“At the time, I scarcely recalled it,” Henry says, shooing away an enterprising duck that comes too close, seeking a free meal. “I remembered that Mrs. Dumbledore and the younger sister both died the next year, though I don’t know the cause of their deaths, nor do I remember their funeral services. Perhaps their mother exhausted herself while caring for a young witch who was ill, and then the young girl succumbed to what ailed her. What I did recall in 1945 is that Aberforth was present at that same party, and he didn’t like Gellert Grindelwald. When I asked him, Aberforth was the one to remind me that Albus and Grindelwald had once been friends. Professor Bagshot had been adamant that Grindelwald was in England to turn over a new leaf, that her nephew was a ‘good lad’ who’d prove himself.” Henry sighs. “Grindelwald certainly proved himself, but I doubt she’s proud of him. Anyway, those deaths, and Aberforth not finishing school—that would be the sad tale, and still I feel as if I should be apologizing to their spirits for speaking of it.”

“I don’t think you’ve said anything that would offend a spirit, Henry.” Salazar recalls the name Bagshot. She wrote _Hogwarts: A History_ before the war began, the book that Nizar’s portrait is still advising him not to read. “Albus Dumbledore was certainly not friends with Gellert Grindelwald when he began his campaign.”

“No. Their friendship ended the same month it began, one year later,” Henry says. “Aberforth would _not_ grant me details, and I wouldn’t ask for them, were I you. He made it clear the subject was forbidden. He did say that Grindelwald and Albus’s friendship fell apart because Grindelwald showed no concern or care that their sister had just died. Grindelwald left, but I believe it was their sister’s death that drove the two brothers apart. Aberforth was willing to go to Hogwarts to convince Albus he needed to duel and defeat Grindelwald so we could end the war, but otherwise he wouldn’t speak to his brother. Albus made far too many ‘jokes’ about Aberforth not knowing how to read, and several off-color remarks about goats. It didn’t make me think highly of Albus, though he does well enough as a teacher at Hogwarts. I do respect Albus for his ability to lead the Wizengamot as Chief Warlock, even if I still don’t care for his company.”

Salazar doesn’t think highly of Albus Dumbledore at all, but that isn’t what he needs to say right now. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I trust you, Saul. I know if you’re asking about the Dumbledore family, there must be a reason for it,” Henry replies.

Salazar has to swallow down a lump composed of far too many conflicting emotions. He must say something of honesty; he doesn’t want to lose that trust for foolish reasons. “You and I both know that when Armando Dippet retires or departs from this world, Albus Dumbledore will replace him as Headmaster of Hogwarts.”

Henry pulls a face. “To be quite honest, I try not to think about that if it can be helped.”

Salazar nods in understanding. He’d like to say the same. Instead, he thinks on it far too much.

Just before midnight on Hallowe’en, Salazar Apparates to the top of the Heights of Brae. Then, carefully examining the edge of the mountain sheltering the valley, he Apparates to a bit of flat rock…and then he is looking down at the forest, and at Hogwarts herself. Even at this hour, lights are still burning in the castle’s windows, casting glimmering reflections across the Black Loch.

In a few minutes, it will be 1st November 1965. 1995 is not so distant anymore.

_Thirty years, little brother. We’re almost there. Thirty more years._

He Disapparates before he can be tempted to take one step closer. He can’t risk it. Salazar knows his limits, and in this, with Hallowe’en of 1995 now truly in reach…he would enter that castle, and he would not leave.

Salazar can bear another thirty years. He has to and he will, and then he’ll know for certain that every single step has been worth the cost.


	11. Volley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1st September of 1971 changes everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flailed at (mostly flailing) by @norcumii, who is being patient with the fact that I am mentally all over the map right now because recovering from heavy metal poisoning changes things in terms of Everything and I'm starting to have energy again and hey you know I could organize this entire house with the side bonus of forgetting that it wasn't the exhaustion that got me labeled medically disabled and whoops, I can no longer feel my feet. Or stand up.
> 
> Pseudo tl;dr: Imagine that you've had the flu for ten years or so. Ten solid years of exhausted misery. Then, suddenly, you have a bit of energy again. Not a lot, not at first, but after a decade of slogging?
> 
> YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THAT ENERGY. IT IS AN INCOMPREHENSIBLE STATE OF BEING.
> 
> (But my feet are still fuckt and so is my back. Whee!)
> 
> Also I'm not sorry for the ending of this chapter.

Based on the way Salazar feels when he wakes one morning in January 1968, the year if either going to be very good, or very, very bad. This time, it is only an earthquake that disturbed the earth beneath his feet, but he judges that Sicily is certainly the worse off for it than he is. He pays more attention to the Vietnam War when a battle breaks out in the Khe Sahn region of the Quảng Trị Province, but it seems to forget that battles are meant to end.

Another spill of radiation occurs somewhere to his southeast, making him feel vaguely ill for days. By way of news broadcasts from France, Salazar learns that it was not a localized detonation of a bomb. Instead, a nuclear power plant in Switzerland suffered a critical partial meltdown of its core. For those above the cavern, which is being sealed, the damage is minimal. Beneath Salazar’s feet, the earth feels hot and angry, though not disastrously so.

In the meantime, two submarines sink in the Mediterranean within days of each other, but no country claims credit for the attacks. A second unending battle begins in Vietnam while the other is still raging. British Minister for Magic Norbert “Nobby” Leach suddenly falls ill.

Given the sudden upswing in anger and near-outbreaks of violence in Wizarding Britain against Muggle-born wizards and witches, Salazar doesn’t think it to be a coincidence. Leach is the first Muggle-born minister, and that makes him a target.

“I’ve got to stop watching or reading or listening to the news, or I’ll end up utterly pissed and stay that way for the rest of this year,” Salazar says to Nizar’s portrait. “This is getting to be a bit much.”

“It seems like everything is happening at once, doesn’t it?”

“It does.” Between the protests and police actions, the (justified) rioting, the nuclear events, and the wars, Salazar would very much prefer that everyone please calm the fuck down.

Salazar pays Rufus Scrimgeour a visit at his home. Rufus is a safe name, one his brother never heard. Many others are just beginning their careers in the Ministry, and thus should be avoided as much as possible. While under Polyjuice, Salazar had the opportunity to cross paths with Cornelius Fudge, future Minister for Magic, and was _not_ impressed.

Rufus is a decent host, possibly because his sister Aubrey, her husband Deacon, and their two children live with him in the Scrimgeour House, and thus keep the man civilized. Gods know Rufus wouldn’t be capable of managing it on his own.

Aubrey greets Salazar properly after Rufus manages a grunt of acknowledgement, taking his outer robe when Salazar agrees that it’s a bit too warm to keep it on while indoors. She is just as golden-haired as her brother, but her expression is kinder, with fewer lines painting her skin despite the fact that she’s Rufus’s elder by several years. She also lacks the lionesque appearance that speaks of her brother suffering a bad Transfiguration accident.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Aubrey. How is your family?”

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all, Saul,” Aubrey replies, smiling at him. “As to the family, Deacon is out at the moment, and of course the children are off at Hogwarts. I’ll remember you to them when Deacon comes home and the next letters from Scotland arrive.”

“And my regards to them, as well, then. How is your leg these days, Rufus?”

“Tolerable,” Rufus says. True to his word, the grip on his cane is light, the need for it more a safety measure than true pain today. Salazar didn’t get to witness the injury, only learning afterwards that one of Grindelwald’s followers tried to slice off Rufus’s leg during a skirmish. They were quite surprised when Rufus rolled over and cast a hex so strong he _vaporized_ both legs of his attacker. Salazar has always held an appreciation for that sort of vicious retaliation.

“Today, at least,” Aubrey chimes in, looking fond and frustrated at the same time.

Rufus manages a decent go at manners over the tea that Aubrey provides. “What is it you want, Saul?”

Aubrey huffs out a sigh. “I give up,” she mutters, and leaves the parlor. Rufus gives her an angry, baffled look while Salazar tries not to laugh. It requires a certain temperament to endure Rufus’s company for very long, and Aubrey most often doesn’t have it.

“I’d say that I want you not to drive your sister to madness, but as that is a failing endeavor…” Salazar waits until Rufus turns back to him. “I want to know who you think is poisoning the Minister for Magic.”

Rufus sniffs once and frowns. The lines now marking his face only enhance his resemblance to a lion. “Why do you think the Minister is being poisoned?”

“Because there isn’t a single person in the Ministry in any great hurry to run off to the _Prophet_ to inform them as to what scandalous ailment is felling Minister Leach,” Salazar replies. “You know I’m not stupid. Others aren’t, either. They’re going to realize it soon enough, and then the finger-pointing begins.”

“It’s already begun, just quietly.” Rufus sips at his tea and puts the cup down, disappointed. “I still can’t convince Aubrey that a good coffee service is just as mannerly as tea. Yes, it’s most likely a poison. We don’t know what, and worse, we don’t know how it’s being given to him. His food, drink, and correspondence are secure, and still the poor bastard receives a fresh dose of poison at least once a week. Alastor Moody is Head Auror, and it’s driving the man to raving that our forensics lot is so baffled. Moody is about to suggest to M.L.E. Head Crouch Senior that he should encourage Minister Leach to resign from his post.”

Salazar tries not to pull a face in response. “That will not go over well with Wizarding Britain right now.”

“That bad out on the streets, is it? I hear the reports from the Aurors who go out and listen to that blighter speak, but it seems like the young ones don’t know how to read a crowd anymore,” Rufus says.

“I’ve listened to him often. I recognize fascism when I hear it, Rufus.”

“Aye, I recall.” Rufus barks for a house-elf and tells the elf to replace the tea swill with some decent coffee. He asks Salazar if he wants the same.

Salazar looks at the house-elf, who is clean, dressed well, and unafraid of Rufus’s gruff mannerisms. This is not the way it is meant to be, but better this than what others are capable of doing to Britain’s elves. “Coffee would be fine, and thank you.”

“The Master’s guest is welcome,” the elf replies, Disapparating with a quiet pop of air.

“Never heard him say that before,” Rufus mutters. “Well?” he turns back to Salazar, who is still a bit bemused by the elf’s sense of discretion. “What’s your take on this Lord Voldemort twat?”

“That he’s dangerous. We’re going to see violence soon, if it hasn’t happened already,” Salazar warns him. “If they’re already daring to poison a Muggle-born Minister for Magic, what is stopping them from attacking Muggles? Unless they use specific types of magic, we won’t even know of it.”

“Bloody hell,” Rufus growls. “My work is cut out for me, then.”

By next week, the Ministry decides they’ve had quite enough. Voldemort is banned from giving public speeches in Wizarding Britain. The M.L.E. begins a smart campaign about the decision, calling Voldemort’s fear-mongering another form of Wizarding Nazi fascism that the Ministry won’t stand to see repeated.

Then Minister Leach faints while in the midst of giving a speech to reiterate the Ministry’s decision. The _Prophet_ spins the ban as the desperate call from a feeble man who fears losing his power.

“You. Sodding. _Idiots_ ,” Salazar growls when he reads the paper. He crumples it up and tosses it into the fireplace, utterly furious. Amfractus Macmillan took on ownership of the _Prophet_ after his mother’s death last year, and looks to be continuing her habit of printing opinionated drivel and calling it fact. In doing so, he plays directly into Voldemort’s hands.

Minister Leach retires from office with so little fuss it rates scarcely two sentences in the newspaper. A politician in the Wizengamot from a minor family, one the Pure-bloods consider neutral, is elected the new Minister for Magic by overwhelming majority. Eugenia Jenkins reminds Salazar quite a bit of a United States First Lady: dressed to impress with a perfect smile, ready to be the backdrop or proper escort at any occasion for any reason.

When Squibs Rights groups manifest in a mirror to the Civil Rights marches occurring in the Muggle world, Minister Jenkins proves her smile can be stern. Pure-bloods loyal to Voldemort protest her apparent favoritism of allowing one group to speak in public while banning another. Jenkins tells all of Wizarding Britain that a group who is _not_ preaching intolerance still has a right to be heard.

The Pure-bloods backing Voldemort, and others who have hidden their allegiance until now, intercept the Squibs during their third march in Diagon Alley. All it takes is one cast spell, and suddenly the entirety of the Alley is rioting. Pure-bloods are trying to hex the Squibs, the Squibs have clubs and improvised gunpowder bombs, and the shopkeepers and clerks just want everyone to get the hell away from their shops.

Minister Jenkins doesn’t hesitate to send in the whole of the M.L.E.’s assortment of Hit Wizards, Hit Witches, and the Aurors to restore order in Diagon Alley. Salazar decides to Disapparate away from the chaos before he gets hit with a spell or an explosive device.

“Bloody hell,” Salazar gasps out, yanking the Invisibility Cloak from his head and slumping over his own chair. He’s never liked a riot. A battle is at least predictable in its madness. “He instigated the entire thing. The Squib Rights movement, the march. All of it.”

“Which part? I’ve never even _heard_ of a Squib Rights March!” Nizar’s portrait complains.

“Voldemort. He went among the Squibs and encouraged them to march against Wizarding Britain because of the opportunity it would create. Pure-bloods lifted wands against those they consider lesser, even though many of the Squibs are Pure-bloods themselves. Voldemort is encouraging his lot to learn how to go to war.”

“He’s teaching them how to fight their own people.” Nizar’s portrait sounds thoughtful. “I wonder if there was a real Squib Rights movement, and he co-opted it.”

“I’ve no idea. Everything happened so quickly this month, little brother. There wasn’t a publicly known movement, and then there was. There were no marches, and now there are.”

The arrest lists in the _Prophet_ the next day are impressive, though a disproportionate number of Squibs are listed—grouped separately to distinguish them from “proper” wizards and witches. The list of arrested Pure-bloods is rather short. Minister for Magic Jenkins dresses down the Pure-bloods for starting the riot, using scathing terminology that leaves no doubt that she considers their actions to be the equivalent of misbehaving children.

The rebuttal quote from Voldemort is chilling. Where Jenkins chastises, Voldemort sounds conciliatory, as if violence against the rest of Wizarding Britain is the last thing he wants. Salazar reads it aloud so that Nizar can hear it. “ _Squibs are wizards and witches denied magic, but many of the Squibs who marched in Diagon Alley are Pure-bloods. Pure-blooded Squibs can produce fully magical wizards and witches, yet the foolish would attack them and be rid of them. This is not the aim of the Knights of Walpurgis, and I will be discussing it with those who gather under that banner._ ”

“Well. That’s fucking terrifying,” Nizar’s portrait offers. “Voldemort spent eight years setting up his lines of strings, and now he’s starting to pull on them. It was too late when no one had stopped him by 1964, let alone now.”

Salazar nods and finishes reading the relevant quotes. “ _Reporter Teleford asked the Lord Voldemort what the goals of the Knights of Walpurgis really are. Voldemort is quoted as saying that their goals are the peaceful reestablishment of proper order within Wizarding Britain, with full recognition given to the Pure-blooded families whose support maintains the vital function and societal protections provided by the Ministry of Magic._ ”

* * * *

Salazar deliberately avoids Wizarding Britain for the rest of that winter and the whole of spring unless it’s a delivery of the _Daily Prophet_ or the newly begun _Witch Weekly_. The latter is often just as worthless as the first, but sometimes mixed in with all the nonsense is useful information. The only other bit of Wizarding Britain he wants to know about is Henry and the family, but an innocuous letter sent by Owl Post, written in Euphemia’s graceful hand, reassures him that all is well.

Voldemort and his followers have fallen quiet again. It’s a quiet that Salazar doesn’t trust, but with the public gatherings ended, he doesn’t yet have the means to infiltrate Voldemort’s meetings. He’ll find a way, but he knows it will not be this year, nor the next. The water reflects images of fighting wizards and witches, but he can see by the clothing worn by a few glimpsed Muggles that there will be another significant change in fashion before the violence begins.

At a Muggle record shop, he listens to what the clerk is playing on the turntable and ends up purchasing an album by a band called Pink Floyd. He’s heard of them before, but wasn’t impressed. This one is called _Saucerful of Secrets,_ and it’s no longer devoted to the very specific sound that bands seemed to be required to uphold for the last decade.

Curious, Salazar finds the newest releases from groups he’s sampled in earlier years. The Rolling Stones have _Beggar’s Banquet_ , and the very first track is proof that other bands are breaking away from a mold that had become so very irritating. It’s a trend that continues among older bands and new ones. The music for the year, at least, looks to be promising.

When color broadcasts began last year, Salazar exchanged the black-and-white television for a color version of the device. Watching programs in color is…odd. It seems too real, like images divined through warped quartz.

It makes trying to watch any sort of news broadcast even worse than before. Bloody. Hell.

If he spends a _lot_ of 1968 getting pissed on a nightly basis because he made the mistake of watching the evening news, that’s nobody’s business but his own. He won’t have the luxury of drinking once Voldemort’s war begins, and he can’t help everyone. He can’t focus on everything, everywhere, or he’ll end up on the wrong end of some future Death Eater’s wand. Just because he can’t die of it doesn’t mean he wishes to experience torture, or the pain of the Killing Curse.

One morning of perusing the announcements in the _Prophet_ causes his jaw to fall open. “Algernon Longbottom _wed?_ ”

Nizar’s portrait shakes off his interest in the current bit of nonsense on the telly. “Willingly?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps Harfang and Callidora issued an ultimatum on the matter.” Salazar truly cannot see Algie Longbottom willingly fathering children. “Wed to Enid Audrey Fenwick. I’ve no idea who that is, though the announcement states that she is a sister of Benjamin Fenwick, whose son just began his first year at Hogwarts. Remind me to have it out with the whole of Wizarding Britain at some point regarding their collective inability to name children. This young one is named Benjy.” It isn’t even short for Benjamin. That is the boy’s full name. Benjy Fenwick. Salazar almost despairs of this island.

Nizar shrugs. “There are worse things to be called. You know, like Freak.”

Salazar scowls. “Fair point.”

In December, the United States jumps ahead of the space race by developing a Saturn V rocket. That massive thing grants them the ability to send a craft into orbit with such strength that the Apollo 8 mission crosses the void of space to orbit the moon ten times.

One of the results of the journey is a photo of what they dub an “Earth-rise.” The picture is amazing, magnificent enough to steal his breath. “Imagine what Wizarding Britain could do if they would pull their heads out of their arses long enough to consider how much is truly possible,” Salazar murmurs.

“Maybe when the majority of Wizarding Britain stops thinking that Muggles are _quaint_ ,” Nizar’s portrait drawls.

“Don’t try to depress me. I’ve enough reasons of my own.” Salazar regards the reflective glass of the telly, able to see part of Nizar’s portrait and frame against the blank screen. “They’re going to succeed, aren’t they?”

“I think so, but I’m not actually certain. I didn’t get to read that far into the book before my last year of primary school ended, and after that?” Nizar sighs. “It’ll be nice to finally find out what happens.”

That goal, the idea of witnessing a human land on another astronomical body, gives Salazar a reason to grit his teeth and endure the fact that Voldemort’s war is preceded by the world deciding to go entirely mad. The year 1969 is not much better than 1968.

There are good things, of course. An artificial heart is implanted in a patient that keeps the patient alive for nearly five days. No one assassinates or poisons Minister for Magic Jenkins, whose career has settled into mediocracy after the conclusion of the now-dubbed Squib Riots, which makes it sound as if the Squibs were at fault from the start. Salazar lost his tolerance for Jenkins after she began referring to the riots in the same manner. Voldemort is still utterly, eerily silent, even if his Pure-blooded followers remain very public in their newspaper-printed opinions.

Salazar hears the news first from Elizabetha, who visits him briefly. He reads of it in the newspaper the next day when the obituary and death notice is printed by the family. Muriel Prewett’s annoyingly neutral sister-in-law, Isabel Rose Grace (yet another cousin to that lot from Dover) died of unspecified health complications at the age of seventy-eight. The funeral was almost a skirmish between two different factions of the same family. Muriel’s youngest brother, Alfred, is firmly in Voldemort’s court, as is his wife Frances and her Carrow relatives. Ignatius, Lucretia, and her son Henry were officially disowned that same day by Ignatius’s parents for choosing to stand with Muriel, his newly widowed uncle William, older cousin William Henry and his wife Geneva, the Prewett twins Gideon and Fabian, and newlyweds Molly and Arthur Weasley. The rest of the Prewetts, even Alfred’s young twins, are already waiting in line to become Voldemort’s future Death Eaters.

“I’m surprised they’d not done so already,” Salazar says of disinherited Squib Henry. The young man is now twenty-two and entering into a career as some sort of accountant. There are too many titles within titles involved for Salazar to want to make sense of that particular company’s infrastructure, but the salary is excellent and Henry Prewett loves the work, which is all Lucretia and Ignatius ever wanted for their son—his happiness. The fact that he is now dating the witch Joy Dunbar, who doesn’t care a whit that Henry is a Squib, is merely a pleasant bonus in Lucretia’s eyes.

The successful flights of Apollo 9 and Apollo 10 occur, meant to test the readiness of Apollo 11 for a true landing mission, which launches on 16th July. Any sort of landing is stated as to not occur until the 20th—as long as nothing goes wrong.

“Will you please, please, _please_ stop pacing?” Nizar’s portrait demands in annoyance after the third day of ceaseless televised reporting of the flight. “For fuck’s sake, go to sleep!”

“I’ve been capable of feeling it every time humanity has tried to destroy themselves with nuclear radiation and explosions since 1945. I’ll not stop thinking on this landing anytime soon. _You_ go to sleep, if you think yourself capable!”

“Oh, for gods’ sake—Isis!” Nizar yells. “You talk to him!”

“Men are going to land on the _moon_.” Isis glares at Nizar. “I’m not sleeping, either!”

Salazar grimaces and decides to spend the rest of the night perched upon his own roof. Ninety percent of the time, Isis and Nizar’s portraits get along fine, just as they had when Isis was alive. The other ten percent of the time, it’s wiser to let them have at it.

It’s a clear and cool summer night. Salazar stares up at the stars overheard, and wonders if he’ll live long enough to ever experience what it’s like to hover above the boundaries of Earth’s gravity.

The next day, nearing four o’clock in the morning, Salazar watches a man exit a metal pod on another world and realizes he never once thought he’d ever see anything like this. “It’s like viewing science fiction, isn’t it?”

“A bit,” Nizar’s portrait agrees, but he’s gone very quiet. Isis, despite her dislike of the telly, has done nothing but watch everything happen in intense silence. “Salazar?”

“I needed this,” Salazar whispers. “I needed it so very much.” He needed to see that outside of Britain, outside of all the violence and death happening around the world, something good has come of it all. Muggles will recover from their temporary stumble, keep going, keep inventing. People from all over the world are doing exactly as he is, watching or listening to this moment, this live broadcast from the distant body of the moon. A singular event connects them all. He can feel it, so strongly, how many will desire to connect again for reasons much like this.

It’s a reminder that Voldemort does not win the war he is about to start. Then—then. Twenty-five years, eleven months, and ten days from now, he’ll visit a home in Little Whinging, finally performing the _first_ step that will ensure Voldemort’s defeat.

Just days after the moon landing, news from Spain gives Salazar some measure of hope for his country. Francisco Franco must be feeling his age as well as the necessity of presenting the appearance of restoring the monarchy. He names Juan Carlos, Infante Juan’s eldest son, as his Heir. Juan Carlos is dubbed Prince of Spain rather than Prince of Asturias, but for the first time in decades, that chiming demand from the throne is lessened.

It’s annoying to discover that there are no copies and no intention to release the Pink Floyd track that was played during those days of the Apollo 11 broadcast. The band releases two other albums that year, but both lack the song. At least by November, David Bowie has released “Space Oddity” on a full album. “Knew you bloody well had potential,” Salazar murmurs after listening to the rest of the record’s offerings, which are excellent.

Listening to musicians discover their own distinct sounds has served so often as a welcome distraction during the past two years. There are also a number of new groups and musicians: Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Hendrix, and the Doors. Blind Faith manages one entire album before falling apart. Judas Priest gains his attention for being local to the Midlands, but break up in 1970 before they even manage a recording.[1] Black Sabbath is…different, but Salazar isn’t opposed to different. He just thinks their lean towards “evil” theatrics is a bit ridiculous. They’re young; they have no idea what true evil is really like.

Mentioning that he doesn’t care for Deep Purple in the wrong place chances him being tarred and feathered. He can’t even explain _why_ he doesn’t like them, but they simply never appeal. A group who plays in London named Queen is keeping his attention, though. Like David Bowie early in the 1960s, Salazar feels like they have potential.

The Apollo 13 mission almost ends in disaster. Listening to the broadcasts of the American space agency figuring out how to get three men home without anyone dying in space is almost enough to give Salazar a fucking nervous breakdown.

They succeed. It’s celebrated. Then events return to violence as usual.

Salazar buries his nose in music and published books of Muggle fiction just to cope. He _cannot_ be everywhere, he _cannot_ stick his nose into every literal bloody blunder made, especially when he’s already sticking his nose into a magical blunder. Waiting for that magical blunder to begin might drive him ’round the bend, but at least that is a goal he can attain.

He spends June and July of that year nauseated to the point of being unable to eat. Someone is detonating nuclear devices again—in the air, based on his lack of burning feet—but the radioactive buildup in the earth happens, regardless. “Stop making me hate you,” Salazar mutters in the direction of the Channel, wishing France would cease trying to learn how to vaporize things more efficiently.

An absolutely massive festival is held on the Isle of Wight in August. As he often doesn’t sleep, Salazar can listen to every single moment unless the bloody acoustics fail—and unfortunately, that happens often enough to incite the crowd to anger. He missed the previous two festivals on the isle, and would like to be able to listen to this one, please _bloody well shut up_.

“You’re in a mood,” Nizar’s portrait observes when Salazar is trying to cope with yet another frustration.

“I’ve been in a mood for nine centuries. I’m not certain how you failed to notice!” Martial law has been declared in Gipuzkoa while others of his father’s people are on trial for terrorism. Salazar wants to kill something, but he can’t off and kill the man responsible for fucking with his _home_. History and Divination both scream the warning at him, and for a brief time, Salazar hates his own talents. What fucking good are they?

Two Muggle bodies are found in the village square of Little Hangleton early the next year. The radio news proclaims it the work of an unknown killer, possibly a serial killer like the infamous Zodiac Killer in America. They’re baffled by the lacking cause of death, though they report both victims had numerous fractures throughout their bodies.

 _Cruciatu_ , Salazar thinks, feeling intense pity for the victims even as he mentally shifts gears away from the avoidance he’s preferred when it comes to Wizarding Britain’s nonsense. The Wizarding Wireless never reports on the murders, nor does the _Daily Prophet_. None of them yet recognize the significance of those murders, except perhaps Albus Dumbledore. The Chief Warlock is sanctioned by the rest of the Wizengamot for trying to bring the murders to Wizarding attention during a session, though no member of the Wizengamot seems willing to vote Dumbledore out of the Chief Warlock’s chair.

“Why does no one else remember that Voldemort and Tom Marvolo Riddle are the same fucking person?”

Nizar’s portrait shrugs. “He wanted everyone to forget, so they did.”

Salazar lowers that day’s newspaper and stares at Nizar. “An enchantment.”

“Or a curse,” Nizar suggests.

“No. Not a curse. That would be noticed more easily. Curses have consequences. An enchantment, though, especially against the memory of a name—this island would like that. It would remind the land of when the Green Folk dominated her affairs.” Not that Salazar can find evidence of either, but it remains the most sound theory they have.

The number of strange and inexplicable deaths rises. Muggle Britain decides it’s the work of terrorists from Northern Ireland. They’re correct in that the deaths are caused by terrorists, but Northern Ireland has its own difficulties at the moment which are being exacerbated by their accusers. In the specific instances of those tortured to death by _Cruciatu_ , the English are most certainly blaming the wrong people.

Many more die in Northern Ireland and other places because of that mistake, and because of Wizarding Britain’s refusal to tell Muggle Britain the truth about the murders. The Wizengamot eventually admits that someone is murdering Muggles after first torturing them with _Cruciatu_ , but insists it is the work of a lone witch or wizard with a grudge, not the Pure-blooded political faction that is again demanding its right to dominate all aspects of Wizarding life in Britain. This time, Minister Jenkins is not able to render them silent. Discord in the Wizengamot grows between that faction and the few intelligent Pure-bloods among them. Potter, McKinnon, Abbott, Bones, Bagnold, Doge, Ollivander, Sinistra, Prewett, Shafiq, Marchbanks, Longbottom, Scrimgeour, Fortescue, Goldstein, Moody, Weasley, Crouch, Fudge, Pryce, Ross, and Dumbledore are only twenty-two voices. Greengrass, Bainbridge, Macmillan, Cooper, Bluebell, Scamander, Jugson, Max, Slughorn, Pettigrew, Westenberg, Zabini, Shacklebolt, Blishwick, Ogden, Fleet, Dunbar, Smith, Fenwick, and Eastchurch are maintaining neutrality, but Salazar knows that Fleet, Dunbar, Pettigrew, Eastchurch, Smith, Blishwick, and Greengrass aren’t neutral at all, merely biding their time.

Even if the neutral families who aren’t fools spoke up against the Pure-blood faction, they’re outnumbered: Yaxley, Derrick, Travers, Fawley, Rookwood, Mulciber, Talbot, Bulstrode, Frobisher, Montague, Carrow, Flint, Gibbon, Rosier, Hobart, Macnair, Pucey, Burke, Wilkes, Nott, Parkinson, Rowle, Malfoy, Grace, Crabbe, Selwyn, Davis, Bole, Black, Peebles, Goyle, Turpin, Runcorn, Lestrange, Warrington, Bletchley, Rothschild, and Avery have made it clear that they’re in favor of Pure-blood domination, even if they will never publicly or specifically say so. That does not yet take into account how many Pure-blooded families lacking Wizengamot seats also support Voldemort’s ideals. That group _also_ vastly outnumbers the families lacking seats who would rather see Voldemort set ablaze.

“Wow. The Wizengamot used to be crowded,” Nizar’s portrait observes.

Salazar sighs and tosses his crumpled-up newspaper over his shoulder. “Thank you for the warning. How empty is it after the war?”

“I never saw a Wizengamot meeting, but I always had the impression from the _Prophet_ that there aren’t that many people at all.”

“Fabulous.”

Henry brings Salazar his memory of Iola Mae Black Hitchens’s funeral after her death in July of 1971. It includes a memory of speaking to Iola a few days before her death, on her birthday. Iola was happily cackling over the fact that she’d accomplished her goal of outliving her bastard brother Sirius Black I, and by a goodly number of years, at that. She died peacefully in her sleep at the age of one hundred nine. Her funeral was attended by her two surviving children, daughter-in-law, four grandchildren and their spouses, and seven great-grandchildren.

Arcturus Black III attended the funeral with far more alertness in his gaze than Salazar had previously witnessed, surrounded by the family provided to him by Lucretia and Ignatius Prewett. Joy Dunbar and Henry Prewett are bloody _married_ already. Dorea was finally reunited with her older brother Marius Black, who visited from Belgium for the occasion of his aunt’s death. He is in the company of his Belgian wife, Amandine Maes, and two children named Jacinthe Maes Black and Gabin Marius Black. Salazar recognizes Marius at once for having typical Black features, but otherwise being entirely unfamiliar.

Even Druella Rosier Black comes to the funeral, though she attends alone with set, angry lines on her face. Her father-in-law made the news the previous month by publicly disowning and disinheriting Andromeda Black, Druella’s eldest daughter, for the crime of marrying a Muggle-born named Edward Tonks. Salazar was immediately fascinated when he first heard the news last year, as Andromeda’s new spouse is a Black half-English, half-Andalusian wizard whose Muggle parents raised Edward Tonks in the Midlands. It’s obvious that Druella was still not pleased, but her husband Cygnus will always fall in line with his father’s decrees.

Andromeda wasn’t the only Black to suffer such a fate. Pollux Black finally decided Septimus Weasley was too much of a Blood Traitor to bear, and disowned Cedrella as well. Her sister Callidora has been publicly daring Pollux to do the same to her, wanting to know if he is willing to risk the wrath of the Noble House of Longbottom. In response, Charis Black Crouch publicly disowned both of her own sisters for their “improper” marriages, standing on Pollux’s side of the family line. That must’ve come as a shock to her husband Caspar, who sits in the Crouch Wizengamot seat and espouses tolerance instead of bigotry.

Sixteen-year-old Phineas Burke stayed with Algernon, Augusta, and Robert Longbottom during the funeral service. They quietly laughed themselves breathless as Alphard Black, who finally and sensibly moved out of his parents’ townhouse in Islington, informed them that Pollux Black tried to self-immolate from sheer rage at the idea of so many disowned Black-blooded Half-bloods, Blood Traitors, and Muggle-borns clustered in the same place for Iola’s funeral. Thirteen-year-old Frank Longbottom tried to sink into the earth out of embarrassment at his parents’ behavior. It’s a good memory to receive, a balm against what is to come.

Voldemort’s people continue to attack only Muggles. A murder or three here, a burnt house or strangely damaged village there. No rhyme or reason, no pattern. No one in Wizarding Britain has yet said anything of Death Eaters or Dark Marks, and no glowing symbol has been cast over any of their work. Salazar only manages to intercept _one_ group by way of Divination, which spares only a single village from a night’s torture. None confront him; before he can even take note of their faces, they Disapparate.

“He doesn’t want them to be caught or seen. Not yet,” Salazar murmurs over a glass of wine that evening. It’s the only alcohol he’ll now allow himself. Perhaps later it will be safer to imbibe, but not right now.

“Voldemort likes attention,” Nizar’s portrait says.

Salazar nods. “He’ll want it public. He’ll want a spectacle.”

“He wants bodies on the ground, you mean.”

“Yes, little brother. I’m aware.”

* * * *

1st September 1971 is a day that Salazar has been looking forward to for a multitude of reasons. He arrives at King’s Cross Station, crosses the invisible barrier for Platform 9 ¾, and hides under his brother’s Invisibility Cloak while waiting for everyone else to appear. Hogwarts announced by way of the _Prophet_ and _Witch Weekly_ that Hogwarts would see a record-breaking 305 students this year, so there is bound to be a crowd.

Salazar stews over that number while families and students cross over the barrier, enter the station by Floo, or Apparate directly onto the platform. That many students is a _low_ number, not record-breaking, and he’d like to break a blackboard over someone’s head for whatever caused Hogewáþ’s student attendance to drop so fucking much. He can’t blame the war, not when Wizarding Britain won’t even acknowledge that it’s already begun. This must be something else, but that is information he cannot find by speaking to parents or students or Ministry officials. That will require setting foot in the castle herself. As Salazar cannot yet do such a thing, he sulks. It’s an effective use of his time as any.

His attention is caught by pale skin, black eyes, and stark black hair. Severus Snape is still quite easy to recognize, but he isn’t followed onto the platform by either of his foul parents. Instead, a ginger-haired girl follows after Severus Snape, her eyes wide, her smile delighted…and her eyes are a brilliant, shining emerald green.

“Wow, Sev!” the girl exclaims, grabbing hold of the boy’s hand without a moment’s hesitation. “It’s just like you said!”

“I’d never lie to you, Lily,” the boy says in response. He looks a bit smug, but there is genuine, easy affection between them.

Salazar isn’t ashamed of the fact that he gapes at the pair for a moment. The ginger girl is followed onto the platform by two aging individuals who he assumes are either parents or grandparents, as well as a sour-faced twig of a girl, perhaps two years older than Lily. She has dark blonde hair and blue-grey-lavender eyes filled with resentment.

Lily of the unknown surname and Severus Snape live in the same fucking village. Salazar resists the urge to bash his head against the nearest brick wall.

 _Please let that family have moved to Cokeworth after Lily turned five years of age,_ Salazar thinks in near despair, watching eleven-year-old Severus do a fine job of helping to guide the baffled Muggle family across the platform until they have a very good place to observe the train, as well as to watch those arriving after them. For gods’ sake, Salazar cannot possibly be _that bad_ at spying.

He uses the Cloak to slip closer, deftly avoiding stampeding children and one escaped Kneazle, who is being chased by a harried-looking mother and her very small son. “I’m glad our daughters met you a few years back, Severus,” the old man is saying. That would be Lily and Petunia’s father, then, and the woman is likely to be their mother. “If we hadn’t moved house back to Cokeworth after my retirement from Daw Mill, I have no idea what we would’ve done to find this place.”

“It’s nothing, Mister Evans,” Severus says, dropping his head so that his hair hides his face. “Besides, you’re all smart. It wouldn’t have been that hard.”

Evans. Their name is bloody _Evans!_

Salazar gnashes his teeth in frustration. That common name certainly did its job of thwarting his efforts to locate Nizar’s biological mother.

“It isn’t nothing, young man,” the woman corrects gently. “Thank you very much.”

“Yeah. Mum’s right, and so is Dad,” Lily says. Severus nods, ducking his head even further to hide his face. That isn’t a trait of shyness; that is a trait of hiding, of avoidance. Children who are praised tend to smile, to show pleasure. Severus Snape looks as if he would rather be eaten by a dragon. Salazar’s opinion of Eileen and Tobias Snape, already lurking on the ground, goes off to drown itself in the Mariana Trench.

Salazar judges the ages of Lily’s parents based on their appearance, as well as the latest a Muggle mother can safely bear a child if her monthlies have not already ceased. If Lily, the younger sister, was born last, then the latest age Salazar would dare name is forty-five—and that is truly dangerous, not unless the Muggle giving birth is fortunate enough to have a magical healer nearby. Lily is now eleven of a certainty to be standing on this platform, ready for her first year of Hogwarts; Mrs. Evans would be, at most, fifty-six years old. Meanwhile, if her age is comparative to her husband, then that is the look of a man who has lived and worked a hard life. His expression, though, is very kind. If it is toil that has aged him rather than illness, then Salazar would wager that Mr. Evans did so for the sake of his family.

“Freak,” Petunia hisses at Severus. It’s obvious that the man and his wife don’t hear her, but Lily and Severus do. Severus flips off Petunia with two fingers in a way that is visible to no one but Petunia Evans, which only makes her sour-faced resentment blossom in full.

Unfortunately, the lad doesn’t get to stand with the Evans family for long. “ _There_ you are!” Eileen Snape hisses, grasping hold of Severus’s thin shoulder and marching him away from the Evans until they’re standing in their own clear space on the platform. Many of the Pure-bloods are pretending the woman doesn’t exist, while Eileen’s pinched, angry glare keeps anyone else from wanting to approach at all. “I told you to wait for me, you little brat.”

“They needed help,” Severus mumbles. Then, like it’s being dragged out of him, “Sorry, Mother.”

“The Muggles do not need your help, or anyone else’s help. They don’t belong here, anyway,” Eileen snaps. “You should take your father as a prime example of why they’re not to be trusted. I’ve asked you not to associate with that filth. Have I not?”

“No.” Severus is biting at his lip, but defiance colors his voice. “You’ve never asked. You’ve just told. But you also tell me I’m capable of making up my own mind, so I did and I have. Lay off, Mother.”

“Well—I absolutely _never_ ,” Eileen gasps in fury. She proceeds to completely ignore her son…to her son’s apparent relief. He returns his attention to the Evans family, so Salazar does, also.

“It’s certainly…well, old-fashioned,” Mrs. Evans is saying of the train. “Perhaps a bit twee.”

Lily tilts her head at the train engine they’re both regarding. “As long as it pulls the train, it doesn’t matter very much, does it Mum?”

“I suppose not,” Mrs. Evans agrees. “Malcolm?”

“Some of the old steam engines are rolling along just fine, still. No harm in it, Jane. I think it’s quaint, like those quills and inkpots and scrolls Hogwarts is so insistent on,” Malcolm Evans replies.

Lily, meanwhile, takes another glance at her sister and pulls her off to one side, leaving their parents to admire the train. “I’m sorry, Tuney, I’m sorry! Listen—” Lily catches her sister’s hand and holds on tight, though Petunia Evans is doing a valiant job of trying to get away. Despite being taller and older, Petunia is thin and possibly weighs about as much as a damp rag, so Lily has no trouble keeping hold. “Maybe once I’m there—no, listen, Tuney! Maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!”

“I don’t—want—to—go!” Petunia declares, which is one of the greatest lies that Salazar has ever heard voiced. When Petunia’s face wasn’t set in sour displeasure, she was gazing at the train with an expression of pure longing.

Petunia finally succeeds in freeing her hand. “You think I want to go to some stupid castle, and learn to be a—a—” Her gaze whips around the platform. “—you think I want to be a—a _freak_?”

Salazar finds himself staring again. Petunia Evans Dursley starts her vitriol while young, then. That isn’t the slightest bit reassuring, especially when her younger sister’s emerald eyes well up with tears. “I’m not a freak,” Lily says. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“That’s where you’re going.” Petunia seems to be warming to her new narrative. “A special school for freaks! You and that Snape boy. Weirdos, that’s what you two are. It’s good you’re being separated from _normal people_. It’s for our safety,” she sniffs.

 _I hate you already,_ Salazar decides. He isn’t fond of hating children, but Petunia is thirteen years old, not three, or seven, or even eleven. Petunia Evans is capable of understanding exactly what sort of hurt she’s causing, and she’s enjoying every moment.

Lily glances back at their parents, who have taken up conversation with a Welsh couple next to them—bloody Lyall Lupin, Salazar realizes. Malcolm Evans has no idea he’s speaking to a wizard, not when Lupin took the trouble to dress properly for London, as did his wife, Hope. Their son Remus is tall for his age, but his height only emphasizes that the poor lad is gaunt and appears to be exhausted. Despite the sun that tanned his skin and brightened his blond hair, Remus Lupin looks as if a stiff breeze could send him tumbling arse over teakettle. Salazar feels badly for the lad, as the full moon is only four more days away.

It also frustrates him anew that he can’t find record of the old lycanthropy potion, and that includes the resource of his brother’s portrait. Galiena had taken over her own brewing of the potion at least a decade before the 1017 portrait was created; Nizar’s portrait-based memory was only updated once after its creation, and that was also in 1017. No matter what they’ve tried, the old formula is _not_ succeeding. Until Nizar is free of that fucking canvas, there is nothing Salazar can do for any werewolf.

Lily, it seems, is not above firing back. When she gathers herself and speaks again, Salazar turns to find her glaring at Petunia. “You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote to the headmaster and begged him to take you.”

Petunia turns bright red. “Beg? I didn’t beg!”

 _Nor do you deny it._ It’s the lack of denial that intrigues Salazar, given the vitriol she just spewed.

“I saw his reply,” Lily says, the fire already calming itself. “It was very kind.”

Then Salazar’s attention is caught by the arrival of the Potter family, and he misses the rest of their hissed conversation. Henry, Elizabetha, Monty, and Euphemia all decided to come to the station with James for his first trip to Hogwarts. He’s surprised Charles and Dorea didn’t join them, but as they remain childless, perhaps it was not a trip the two could bear.

Monty’s hair is not quite as wild as it used to be, though he’s collected a few strands of silver at the temples. He is also not using that ridiculous hair potion, thank the gods. Monty has spent time in the sun at some point recently, and picked up a stronger bronze cast to his skin that highlights his parentage. His robes are a mirror to his father’s, long and black, with tan jacket, trousers, and a dark green shirt beneath—or possibly that is a black shirt made from an interesting batch of dye, given the purple and blue that Salazar is seeing in the threads. Without saying a word, Monty is telling everyone present that he is his father’s Heir in name as well as beliefs.

Euphemia’s hair is still solid black, braided and coiled around her head in near-Grecian elegance. She has a few lines at the edges of her eyes, but is still in excellent health—Salazar refused to stop sending Restorative Potions to her, even if they had to become anonymous sendings. Her sea-green silk robes, intermixed with yellow and pink-violet threads, are a close match to her eyes.

Elizabetha walks like a queen, and dresses like one, also. She’s wearing a sari over a bejeweled Edwardian-styled tea dress that was common in India at the turn of the century, a creation of two cultures that were trying to mesh and clash at the same time. She is _definitely_ using Monty’s hair tonic, given that her hair lies in sleek perfection. Even though her unpinned hair is liberally striped with grey, and she wears only flat woven sandals upon her feet, Elizabetha still makes almost everyone around her appear drab.

Henry is seventy-eight years old, and in Muggle terms, he almost looks it. Over the past five years, his hair has gone entirely grey with no variations left within the strands; its only other color comes from reflected light. His skin is wreathed by lines of laughter and age; he’s now relying on golden-rimmed spectacles at all times instead of just the occasional need of them for reading. Monty has a pair of round, silver-wrapped spectacles, but still rubs at them in the manner of someone who isn’t used to them. James’s glasses are just like his father’s—or perhaps it’s the opposite that’s true.

Aside from his glasses, James Potter’s resemblance to his father and grandmother is evident in his hair, a wild and curling black disaster that seems to get wilder as they come further out onto the platform. James walks with his chin up, his shoulders back, proud of who he is, where he came from, and where he is going. He immediately reminds Salazar of a smug, arrogant upstart, and that is not the best sort of beginning. Euphemia and Monty would refuse to raise someone like Lucius Malfoy, but Salazar also knows that James Potter has been sheltered for almost the whole of his life due to constant, dire threats made against the family. Sheltered can often mean spoiled, even if it’s unintentional.

 _Please do not go to school and act like a complete prick_ , Salazar silently begs the boy. Nizar’s portrait is already going to attempt imploding after he hears about the friendship between Severus Snape and Lily Evans.

Before Salazar can get any closer, the train whistle’s first warning echoes through the station. Salazar winces and rubs at his ear, thinking on how much he didn’t miss that sound as this sort of steam engine has been slowly retired from general service. The Potter family was riding the edge of being fashionably late; they’re one of the last families to arrive at the station. Salazar steps back again, finding a brick column to lean against that will help people to flow around him rather than run him down.

Peter Pettigrew boards the train. One of the young McKinnon girls. A Ratier boy and a Gibbons girl. James Potter charges forward after giving his family a proper farewell, possibly warned by his parents that it’s best to find yourself a compartment early if you want a good seat for the ride. The Black family appears and disappears so quickly it’s hard to imagine they were there at all, but a black-haired, pale-skinned youth with the Black family grey eyes is leaping to board the train. That would be Sirius Black III, then. He resembles Dorea more than he resembles his parents, which is a kindness for the boy. Severus Snape and Lily Evans board together. Neither Salazar nor Mr. and Mrs. Evans miss it when Severus and Lily return to hand-holding, with Severus in the lead; Petunia, her back deliberately turned on the train, doesn’t notice, nor does she see her parents’ approval of the act. Eileen Snape must have left the moment it was time to board the train, given she’s nowhere to be seen.

A flock of ginger-haired Prewetts of various ages fly by. A near-adult female Bones student and a very small brother Bones, likely a first-year, board the train, followed shortly afterwards by another Bones girl—that one is definitely a cousin, not a sibling. One of the Jugson twins trots along, muttering under his breath.

Bellatrix Black saunters by, trailed by a lovesick Ingrid Nott, Martinus Flint, the other Jugson twin, and Quintin Carrow. Fortunately for everyone else’s sanity, this is her last year of Hogwarts attendance, else Salazar would have considered doing something to sabotage it. Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black approach and board the train together, apparently intent on making the most of the marriage already arranged between them.

Monty had not appreciated Salazar’s letter regarding the public announcement, which was a long effort devoted to the concept of _I told you so._ Dorea wrote to Salazar on the family’s behalf, saying it wasn’t polite to mock her great-niece’s unfortunate position. Salazar is unrepentant; it is not his fault that Narcissa Black insists on acting like her grandparents.

A Derrick boy keeps his head ducked, shoulders hunched, as he runs for the train. Then it’s the Lestrange twins, who radiate danger and foulness. A Runcorn, an Avery, a Mulciber, yet another Jugson, another Rosier, another Avery, a Montague. Hopkirk, McLaggen, Fenwick, Parkinson, Vanity, Fawley, Lovegood, MacDonald, a Max girl, Macnair, another Fawley, two more bloody Carrows, another sodding Rosier, a McLaggen, a frantic Ollivander, a Burke, a Crouch—Salazar quickly loses track of students as they swarm the train. Frank Longbottom darts by, still looking a great deal like his father and uncle. Remus Lupin waits until the swarm is past before he boards the train, but at a much more sedate pace. He would look calm to anyone who didn’t know his gait was caused by pain.

The moment the train is away from the station, with the last echoes of departing students fading away, Salazar’s instincts sit up and take immediate notice. It’s far too silent. He leaves the safety of the column and glances around. There are plenty of Muggle families about, Half-blood parents, and Blood Traitor-dubbed Pure-bloods, but everyone who supports Voldemort is gone. Every single one of them.

Shit.

Salazar doesn’t wait for confirmation, or try to weigh the pros and cons of who should and should not be saved. His priority has always and unashamedly been to concern himself with family first unless his family is perfectly capable of handling things on their own—but Henry and Elizabetha are getting older. Euphemia hates fighting. Monty is the only one of the four that is still likely to be good with a wand in battle, but he shouldn’t do it alone.

Then the first black-cloaked, silver-masked figure Apparates onto the platform, wand already raised. They’re followed quickly by six more. No one shouts in alarm. None realize they’re no longer safe.

Salazar quietly steps into place beside the Potters as a Death Eater casts the first spell. The Killing Curse.

Meant for Henry.

He has only to take one more step, and then his back lights up. Pain spreads from his spine outwards.

Salazar lets out a strangled scream. It’s been a long, _long_ time since he’s done this. He’s forgotten how much it fucking hurts!

He drops to his knees just in time to see Monty fire off a returning hex at the Death Eater, moving to stand in front of them. Salazar would like to join him, but first he has to remember how to make his limbs work.

“Who did that?” Henry asks, crouched on the ground with Euphemia and Elizabetha pulled down with him. The shielding charm variant he learned from Salazar during the last war is already active, though it won’t stop another Killing Curse.

Salazar manages to flop his arm around enough so the sleeve of the Cloak falls back. He reaches out, revealing his left hand and the silver ring he always wears, accompanied by the wristwatch he found to replace the one lost to Tsar Bomba in 1961. It’s not quite an exact duplicate, but that loss taught him to always imbue his Muggle-made belongings with strong protective charms.

“Saul?” Henry whispers in shock.

“Ow,” Salazar gasps in response. “Forgot how much that hurt. Tell me you’re still carrying a Port Key.”

“As of late?” Henry chuckles without humor while Elizabetha swears in Punjabi under her breath. “Of course we are. MONTY!”

“I CAN’T!” Monty has become part of the line of defence for Muggles who can’t get to the platform barrier, a return to London and safety. There are bodies on the ground who aren’t moving.

“We’ll keep the lad safe!” Rufus Scrimgeour yells. “Get out of here, Harry!”

“I’m holding you to that, Rufus,” Henry mutters, grasping Salazar’s wrist. Elizabetha clasps Euphemia’s hand before latching onto Henry’s robes. Their Port Key is an innocuous little crystal phial. “ _Portus!_ ”

[1] The band reforms not long afterwards, but Judas Priest v.1.0 doesn’t last very long.


	12. Two Hallows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sign of a serpent is meant to be one of protection, not a curse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flailed at by @norcumii and then prodded at by me because What TF Do I Do Now. O_O
> 
> (Also, I might forget to post tomorrow for certain reasons and I'd rather make certain this goes out on time. I mean, it's already Friday on the other side of the planet, anyway.)

They land in the back garden. Salazar can smell saffron crocus. Elizabetha is probably one of the only witches in England who can successfully cultivate that flower on this miserable, stupid island.

Right, he’d forgotten that, too. Being hit with a curse meant to murder him puts Salazar in a foul mood.

Henry hasn’t let go of his hand, and uses it to find the rest of Salazar and roll him over. “Saul. Hood, please.”

“Grrn.” Salazar lifts his right arm so it falls over his face, dragging the hood back with it. “Hello.”

“When in the blue blazes did you steal my cloak?” Henry asks, helping Salazar to sit up—to his intense dismay. Salazar would have preferred to lie on the ground for a bit longer. Hours. Perhaps days.

“Didn’t.” That’s a discussion he never wanted to have. “Long story. Ow. Fuck.”

“That _was_ the Killing Curse. Wasn’t it?” Euphemia has her wand out, casting one of the modern diagnostic charms on Salazar before he can protest. It isn’t as if it will do her any good at all. Or him, for that matter. His magic hums as though it’s been electrified, a horrific accompaniment to the pain.

“I feel like death,” Salazar rasps. He hopes she understands that to mean _yes._

“Goodness” Euphemia blurts in surprise. The ghostly image of a human form is brightly lit with all the varying angry red-violets of a body that is badly injured from head to toe. That is the sort of colorful damage a healer usually sees just before their patient dies. “Saul, what does this mean?”

“It means the Killing Curse really, really sodding hurts if you survive long enough to find that out,” Salazar snaps, and then grimaces in apology. “Sorry. I’m not…not at my best right now.”

Elizabetha joins Henry in assisting Salazar. “None of us are, not after that. Let’s get you off the ground.”

“Let’s not,” Salazar complains, but none of them listen. Fuck his luck, can’t a man flop around on the ground like a dying fish in peace?

“When I said that you would see us the moment the train departed on first September of this year, this isn’t what I had in mind,” Elizabetha says after they enter the manor. “But I thank you for saving Harry’s life.”

“Not the first time, and vice versa,” Salazar replies in a vague grumble. “Ground floor, sunlight, far too much tea in my future?”

Euphemia lets out a giggle that has a hint of hysteria in it. “You talk as if it’s such a hardship.”

After Henry helps him to sit, Salazar uses his shoe edge to remove his left trainer, then to pull off his sock, before repeating the same procedure with his left toes to remove right trainer and sock. Placing his feet down on bare tile, with no barrier between himself and the earth save a single layer of stone, helps soothe the full body ache. He manages to shed the Cloak, but afterwards he slumps in the chair, head tilted back, and stares wearily up at the solarium’s glass ceiling.

If Salazar had known anything— _anything_ —of an impending attack at King’s Cross, he wouldn’t have used the Cloak. Multa Facies Sucus. A glamour. Makeup and dye. Any other option except the bloody Cloak!

Henry doesn’t press on the matter of the Invisibility Cloak. Not yet. “Was that an assassination attempt and a crime of opportunity regarding the Muggles, or was it an attack meant only for the Muggle families who hadn’t yet left the station?”

Salazar takes a moment to gather his wits and find his voice. “That lot was prepared, Henry. It was a planned attack. I’m not sure if the assassination attempt was part of it, but why wouldn’t Voldemort’s lot take advantage if the opportunity presented itself?”

“It wouldn’t have been an attempt if not for you,” Henry says after a moment. “It would have succeeded.”

Salazar glares at the ceiling. “I refuse to dwell on that. I have enough things to worry about as it is.”

“You’re certainly not worried about your wardrobe,” Euphemia says as Elizabetha returns with tea; Salazar can hear the tray clattering. “The last time I saw you, you were wearing a proper suit and shoes. Now you’ve gone to denims, Muggle t-shirts, a leather jacket, and trainers!”

“It’s fashionable. Besides, d’you have any idea how many centuries I was required to wear layers upon layers of clothing just to exit my own sleeping chamber of a morning?” Salazar turns his wrist a few times until he feels that his wand is still strapped in place. This would be the absolute worst time to lose it. He might lose his bloody mind with it. “Most of them, that’s how many. You get bloody sick of it after…after a very long while.” He isn’t doing math to figure out his age right now. Of late, he avoids thinking about it as often as possible.

“How long does this pain last?” Elizabetha wants to know as she sets the tray on the table.

“No idea.” Salazar tries swallowing and thinks tea to be an excellent idea. “It depends on the strength of the casted curse. It still would have most certainly killed whoever it struck.”

“Then may my failed assassin have been a terrible wizard,” Henry says in a strained voice. Even with all of the threats and perpetrated violence, no one had yet to attempt to use the Killing Curse against the family.

“Who is Pink Floyd?” Euphemia asks.

Salazar finally lifts his head, proving that yes, his head _aches_. It isn’t as bad as it could have been, though. The magic behind it was relatively weak, which speaks of an enthusiastic incompetent. “Pink Floyd is a Muggle musical group. Have the lot of you stopped listening to Muggle radio stations?”

“Not intentionally.” Euphemia looks a bit sheepish. “James was three years old when he accidentally broke the old family wireless by tripping over a rug. It’s how we learned that his eyesight isn’t the best, but the Oculus Potion doesn’t seem to like Potters.”

“No, it really doesn’t,” Henry says in genuine amusement for his grandson’s antics. “James is taking after my father for needing spectacles so early. As for the wireless? When we bought a replacement in Diagon Alley, we didn’t realize that they’d changed the device so that it’s now only capable of receiving Wizarding signals. I should have immediately gone out to London and rectified the oversight, but I never quite got around to it. There has always been something else to do that seemed more important, and now we’re a decade behind on Muggle doings.”

“It wasn’t an oversight. It was deliberate, and you know it,” Salazar retorts. “Who produces those radios, Henry?”

Henry sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Hobart. Warrington and Hobart, to be specific as to the company name. I'm ashamed to admit I didn’t even think on it.”

“And both families pledged themselves to Voldemort before the Ministry ordered him to be silent in public.” Elizabetha shakes her head. “They didn’t want anyone to be paying attention to Muggle doings. That might work against the spread of their cause.”

The front door suddenly slams open, jarring Salazar awake from an unexpected bit of upright napping. “Bloody fucking HELL! One of them was a sodding Montague!”

“Such a shocking surprise,” Salazar growls sarcastically. Elizabetha glares at him and threatens to put sugar cubes in his tea instead of honey. “What? It’s the truth.” She holds the threat for a moment longer before deciding to be kind to the man who is still in pain. Salazar accepts the cup long enough to take a sip that soothes his throat before placing it back on the table with a clatter. He needs a Restorative Potion first, or he’ll drop the bloody cup.

Euphemia stands up and goes to meet Monty in the foyer. “You’re all right, dear?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Maybe a bit singed, but fine.” There is a pause, which is either Monty taking off what was singed, or Euphemia fixing it. “Those blighters departed in a hurry after everyone who was capable used a Port Key to leave, made it through the barrier, or Disapparated. Two wizards are dead, but many others, Muggles included, are injured. I gave the M.L.E. a brief statement when they arrived to take Rufus’s place, but said quite firmly that I was going home, and they know where to bloody well find me if they need me.”

“Burnt, not singed,” Euphemia says a moment later, proving Salazar’s guess correct. “How is Rufus?”

“He’ll be fine. In the meantime, the Obliviation Squad has their work cut out for them,” Monty says as he enters the room. His shirt is intact, but the robes and jacket he wore earlier are gone. “One of those masked bastards cast a massive green symbol onto the floor. A skull with a serpent emerging from its open mouth. That’s when the lot of them Disapparated.”

“Did they say anything?” Henry asks while Elizabetha frowns. A serpent to her, and to Salazar, is meant to be a sign of protection, not a curse. “The attackers, I mean.”

“Not a word.” Monty sits down when Euphemia gives him a firm nudge. “They nailed Rufus in his bad leg, so I imagine he’s still at St. Mungo’s, probably making them all wish he was somewhere else. The rest of us who fought back are all right. I left when the Minister arrived and started talking about medals. I don’t want a medal—I want the Montagues investigated!”

“That won’t happen. Barty Crouch will want it, too, but he’ll be shouted down. That pack of idiots in the Wizengamot I have to work with will threaten to defund the Department of Magical Law Enforcement if Barty pushes too hard.” Henry shakes his head. “You said two wizards. Who?”

“Oh.” Monty suddenly bites his lip. “I didn’t recognize one of them. Possibly an older Half-blood or a Muggle-born, but the other…they killed Robert.”

Salazar feels his heart drop somewhere far below its usual resting place. “Robert Longbottom?”

Monty swipes at his face while nodding. “Yeah. They knocked him back, and he was never the best duelist. That’s always been Harfang, and I hear Frank’s no slouch, but…” He sighs. “One of them knocked him back and the other hit Robert with the Killing Curse. Auror Moody’s gone to tell Augusta so that she can travel to Hogwarts, meet the train, and…and nobody wants Frank to find out that his father’s dead from anyone but family.”

Elizabetha sounds like she might be ready to chew upon steel. “That would explain your ire towards the Montagues. Who, Monty?”

“Octavius, I think. That bunch tends to all look alike, what with that nose, the lack of chin, and that scowl,” Monty answers. “We’ll find out in the paper tomorrow, or Macmillan will bow to the Wizengamot’s bigoted majority and not mention a word. Neither would surprise me.”

“Stop being so cynical. That’s my bloody job,” Salazar says.

“Right now it’s my turn, Saul,” Monty retorts. “Are you all right?”

 _Better than Robert,_ Salazar thinks in regret. “Yes. Frank is only thirteen, isn’t he?”

“He’ll be missing his first few weeks of classes, I suspect,” Henry says softly. “Augusta will want him at home, especially…Merlin, this is a terrible day.”

“It might still get worse,” Salazar has to point out. “We don’t know if that will be the only attack.”

“We also have to figure out how to explain why Dad survived the Killing Curse,” Monty says. “A number of witnesses saw it nearly strike him before it was intercepted.” His eyes drop to Salazar’s lap, where part of the bunched-up Cloak is resting. “You used that?”

“Yes. I was on the platform for most of the morning.”

Monty nods, but he’s staring at the Cloak. “That’s Dad’s cloak. Except it can’t be.”

“Monty?” Henry begins to ask, but halts his words when Monty reaches into his back pocket and pulls forth the densely packed, gossamer fabric of the family’s Invisibility Cloak. “Oh.”

Monty flips out the fabric so that it unrolls until the ends brush the floor. “Saul, tell me that’s not the same cloak.”

“I can’t,” Salazar says in regret, “because it is.”

Henry reaches out, and when Salazar doesn’t protest, takes the Cloak from Salazar. He slides the fabric between his fingers, a bewildered expression on his face. “Even the pattern, the feel of it, is the same. How?”

Salazar fumbles around in his coat until he finds potion phials. He pulls out all three, putting back the gold and the violet but keeping the green Restorative. Drinking the potion doesn’t rid him of the pain from the curse, but it grants him the energy and clarity of thought to ignore most of it. “What do you know of time travel?”

“I know about the Department of Mysteries and their Time-Turners, along with a great deal of what must by now be very old Muggle science-fiction stories,” Henry says.

“Time-Turners have a five-hour limit.” Monty is still frowning at the second Cloak held by his father. “Are you borrowing that from me in a few hours, then?”

“No.” Salazar accepts the Cloak from Henry when he offers it back—rather unexpectedly, Salazar considers, given that it could easily be claimed by a Potter of this particular bloodline.

“Then what?” Elizabetha is looking at him, as is Henry, but in…in concern, which Salazar thinks to be rather miraculous. Monty’s frown is still directed at the twin Cloaks; Euphemia merely gazes at him, expectant yet patient, willing to wait as long as necessary for a satisfactory answer.

He is suddenly so strongly reminded of being seated at a table with Sedemai, Godric, and their children that he nearly chokes. It takes a bit more tea to wash that choked sensation away, for him to will his hands to stop shaking.

Salazar has spent so long trying to figure out how to explain the inexplicable. He never thought he would be faced with earlier generations of his little brother’s family. Parents, certainly; perhaps grandparents, if they had not by then died of natural means. Lily’s parents are two he now worries about; he’s certain they’re younger than Henry and Elizabetha, yet they appear to be much older.

Salazar looks down at the Cloak he’s clenching in his hands. It is not of this world. It will never rip or tear, never rot nor wither. Once, so very long ago, he hadn’t been certain that what he was attempting would be possible until the very being he sought was standing before him, offering Salazar a choice.

“Do you have a Pensieve?” Salazar takes a breath that doesn’t serve to calm him at all. “I think it’s best if I show you.”

Show them what, though? What moment would best detail all of the things he has no idea how to say?

Why must it be one moment only?

By the time Monty returns with a Pensieve carved from old bluestone, Salazar has decided upon what memories will serve. The silver mist of Salazar’s first gathered memory settles into the bowl in a way that modern Pensieves cannot replicate. “This must be old. Very few in Britain know how to make a Pensieve behave itself any longer.”

Henry nods. “I believe it’s been in the family for as long as that particular tapestry of Hogwarts’ four Houses.”

Salazar nearly drops his bloody wand. He’s glad he wasn’t yet retrieving another memory, because he would have lost it and given himself a migraine in the process. “Oh.” He takes a moment to run his finger along the edge of the bowl that sits on the solarium table. He can’t remember what Godric’s _Pensife_ looked like any longer, but this is Somerset. This is Griffon’s Door. This manor stands atop the land that was once Godric’s ancestral home.

There are no coincidences. Absolutely none.

Salazar returns his wand to his temple and retrieves the rest of what he wishes to share. “There. I…I know you’ll have questions about what you see. Wait until it is done, please. I cannot—I can’t—”

 _Please do not make me view what I’ve just granted you._ For the Potters, this will be curiosity, questions answered. For Salazar, it will be pain he would prefer only to endure once, and that time is at least seven years hence. He saw battles as a child and knows what it does to the soul; he won’t bring James Potter into this war until James is an adult capable of choosing such for himself.

“We understand,” Elizabetha says, gripping his hand. Her skin is silky with herbal tinctures and the gentle softening that comes with age, but her fingers are as warm as ever. “Will you still be waiting for us when it’s done?”

Salazar swallows, beyond relieved and uncertain how to voice it. “I might wander off, if my legs can manage it, but I won’t leave the manor.”

“Good enough,” Henry decides, though he does watch with a faint air of curiosity as Salazar shoves his version of the Invisibility Cloak into his inner jacket pocket. “What should we expect to see?”

“Unlike myself and my sister, our little brother was not born of my parents. Nizar was properly magically adopted, though he was related by blood to my father’s line already.” Salazar swallows again. “This will tell you why, and how…and…and possibly far more than you ever dared to think upon.”

“I’ve thought upon it plenty,” Euphemia declares rebelliously, and dunks herself into the Pensieve without waiting for any sort of answer. Monty shrugs, wipes his eyes dry again, and joins her. He’s followed by Elizabetha. Henry reaches out to squeeze Salazar’s shoulder before he enters the Pensieve.

Salazar watches for only moments before realizing that he can’t do so any longer. He struggles to his feet, nearly Conjuring up a bloody cane before his traitorous, whinging knees finally cooperate. He does roam the manor a bit, as promised, feeling the pain ebb as he walks.

He needs a distraction, and immediately goes to seek one out. A new thought is teasing him, the taunting realization that he missed something. Something he should already be aware of. Something _important._

Monty. It has something to do with Monty. Salazar allows his Divination to do as it wills without his direct intervention. The future is easier, but the past is a part of time, and even that will present itself in the water if the need is true.

 _That one’s been in our family a really long time,_ Monty had once said of the tapestry hanging in his bedroom. _Dad says it’s hung in every bedroom for everyone that’s attended Hogwarts for as long as he can recall. He says his grandfather told him that the family was descended from Godric Gryffindor himself, and the tapestry might’ve belonged to him._

The tapestry of his school’s four House emblems didn’t belong to Godric, but perhaps this long lineage of the Potter family did not understand how to seek out who owned it in truth.

Salazar manages the stairs, swearing under his breath all the while. Walking is becoming easy, but climbing should, perhaps, have waited a bit.

He couldn’t, though. Now that the thought has come to him, he has to see if the tapestry still hangs in this house.

James has Monty’s old bedroom, as Salazar suspected. For a moment, he does nothing more than lean against the door frame, his eyes flicking about to take in detail. James kept Monty’s childhood Gryffindor décor, already convinced he would be in the House that hosted his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Possibly it’s hosted every Potter since Ignotus, but Salazar didn’t seek out Potters to know what House of Hogwarts they were part of. He just wanted to track their bloodlines.

There is a disappointing lack of modern Muggle fiction on James’s book shelves, probably copies Henry himself grew up reading. There are only Wizarding toys here and there, placed with a boy’s haphazard understanding of cleanliness, though that bed is too pristinely made to be anything but the work of the family servants.

The tapestry has not moved. Salazar approaches it, holds his breath, and then carefully lifts it from the slight hooks that keep it mounted to the wall. No Sticking Charms, not for something so old as this.

He places the tapestry upside-down on the gentlest surface in the room, the aging quilt atop James’s bed. The edges of the cloth remain properly tucked around the edges, but the rest of the tapestry’s wooden frame is now revealed. Galiena always signed her work, and if she thought it wise, added a bit of magical ownership for those meant to receive it.

The runes weren’t burnt in by magic, but carved by hand. These aren’t the symbols of the Norse or the Anglo-Saxon, but the Pictish Galiena’s father had such fondness for. Salazar puts his hand upon the markings and is surprised when their shape changes. He feels warmth beneath his fingers as the wood responds to ancient spellwork—Galiena’s magic recognizing the touch of family.

Nizar is a direct descendant of Godric and Sedemai. Galiena knew those for whom this tapestry was made. His niece was so very clever, and possessed her own small gift of Sight. Perhaps this was a secret she knew should be kept until just the right moment, as Pictish glyphs shift and change into a Latinized alphabet.

“ _To my cousin Eneko of House Heredia, once apprenticed to House Grypusdor, and to Eadgyth Grypusdor, once apprenticed to my own father for House Deslizarse. I gift this reminder of our home and unified Houses on this first day of Maius 1026 Anno Domini. May it ever bless your family_.”

Salazar grips the bed’s sturdy post before he slides down to the floor. He’d forgotten. He’d entirely forgotten that his cousin had wed Godric’s second daughter the moment she finished her apprenticeships. Eadgyth had been eighteen. Eneko had been older, perhaps forty-five, and Godric had once fretted endlessly about the age difference between them, not wanting to see his daughter become a young widow…but Eneko had returned to visit Hogewáþ, saw Eadgyth for the first time since her infancy, and had promptly begun worshiping the ground she walked upon. Salazar had bloody well stood for his cousin at their wedding, _and he forgot all of it_.

Fucking gods, what else has he lost? He wrote down so much in those early days, and still he missed this.

“I am a gods-cursed fool,” Salazar announces to the empty room. Then he starts laughing like a madman.

When Henry finds Salazar, he is still sitting on the floor, occasionally letting out a hiccup of an exhausted giggle. “Saul?” Henry’s face is dry, but his eyes are red-rimmed and angrily swollen. “Are you all right?”

“My first cousin twice removed married Godric’s daughter,” Salazar gasps out, and erupts in a fresh fit of hysterical giggling. All of that worry, all of that research, and in 1945 the answer had _literally_ been staring him in the face. His own instincts brought him to view this tapestry, again and again and again, and still he hadn’t understood.

Henry sits down beside him with slow grace rather than insist they get up, as if he, too, currently prefers the comfort of a solid, unmoving floor beneath him. “How did you come to realize this?”

“My niece made that.” Salazar gestures up and backwards at the tapestry still lying on James’s bed. “Galiena carved the blessing for their wedding onto the frame. In Pictish. The old glyphs responded to me and translated what I’ve never been able to read. None but those who held our family magic would be able to read what it said, and I doubt it has occurred to many to try.”

“I see.” Henry sounds weary. “Why is that funny?”

“Because—because I attended their wedding,” Salazar replies, hiccupping again as if he’s had far too much to drink. He blames the fucking Killing Curse. “I stood for my cousin when they were wed in 1026, and I’d entirely forgotten it. I’m a fool, and it’s hilarious.”

“You’re not a fool. I can’t remember every detail of what I did as a teenager, and you’ve quite a bit more years than that to contend with.”

“Perhaps,” Salazar allows, still trying to get this ridiculous laughter under control. Stress, he supposes. A long-delayed reaction to a curse that would have killed a beloved friend. A reaction to the last two sodding decades. “There has always been a gap in my research, one I could never fill.” He thinks on scrolls of Preserved written charts, genealogies for branches of families that are long dead, the records he sifted through in churches and monasteries in a hunt to trace every conceivable Potter bloodline once the name became prevalent. “I’d been away from Britain for a time. I came back and married, and researched Potter bloodlines…but London burned, in 1666. I wasn’t yet done connecting the gaps in the lineages. The fire took away the records that would have connected the Potters who existed before to those who existed at that time. I had no idea where to look for the connection between our families. I had to wait until…”

“Until you met us. Until you met James.”

Salazar shakes his head. “It’s that sodding hair, Henry. I knew it was you the moment I met Elizabetha and Monty.” He lets his head rest against the edge of the bed. “With your lineage on one side and the records I already have, I think I can find where Ignotus’s bloodline combined with mine to create your family. I’ll be able to show you the whole of both our families in written form.”

“The whole of your father’s family descendants. The whole of Godric’s descendants. That would be—” Henry breaks off, wide-eyed. “I can’t imagine how complex that must be.”

“It would have been worse if I’d included Godric’s accidental by-blows, but we always knew that Nizar was descended from Godric and Sedemai both, not Godric alone. Of course, even with that in mind, Godric and Sedemai still have _many_ descendants on this fucking island.”

“The Weasleys and the Prewetts immediately spring to mind,” Henry says with a smile. Then the smile fades, his brow furrowing. All of the lines of his face present themselves under unforgiving sunlight. Henry should still be young, and yet it feels ever more often as if time will steal him away long before his body should want to fail. “Harry.”

Salazar swallows, all humor gone from him with a single word. “Hari.”

Henry gives him a brief, sharp look that melts into remembrance. “You called me that when we met. I told you my name, but your pronunciation was just like that. You’ve never called me Harry.”

“I did try,” Salazar points out. “I’ve never succeeded. Some habits are not so fond of change.” Except one time. Just once, Salazar _knows_ he will get it right. That time has not yet come to pass, but it’s the only moment that matters.

“Harry James Potter,” Henry whispers. “That’s my great-grandson’s name.”

Salazar’s attempted smile is probably horrific to witness. “One day, he will be.”

* * * *

There is eerie silence when Salazar retrieves his memories from the bluestone Pensieve. He feels both better and worse to have them restored. Monty, Euphemia, and Elizabetha all look as if they’ve been weeping, and Salazar would very much like to join them in doing so.

Euphemia finally draws in a sharp breath that another might mistake for accusatory. “You told me once that you chose this long life for another. You’re still alive for _him_.”

Salazar can only nod. “Yes.”

Henry is struggling for equanimity, and maintains enough of it to speak in a steady voice. “When we first met, you said you’d been looking for me. After we spoke once the war ended, I thought it was only because you were seeking out the last members of your family.”

Salazar thinks he smiles, though it is brief. “You were not exactly wrong.”

“You were doing so because—because my grandson—” Monty makes a choked sound before plastering his hand over his mouth.

“Because my grandson asked it of you,” Elizabetha finishes when Monty cannot.

“Why?” Euphemia asks, keeping a firm grip on Monty’s hand. “Why adopt him?” Salazar can all but hear the unspoken plea beneath: _Why did you not just send him home?_

“He had no one else. I loved him. Why would I not?” Salazar asks in hollow honesty.

“No one else,” Monty repeats. “That child— _that man_ —is named after my dad. I already named James for Dad. It’s… _why?_ Why twice over?”

“Perhaps James sensibly didn’t wish to name his son Fleamont,” Elizabetha says dryly.

Monty lets out a hysterical bit of laughter while Henry looks miffed. “Yes, fair point. You sought us out to protect us.”

“Because we’re all meant to die.” Elizabetha’s eyes have new sparks of color, the silvery saffron gold of the Lohat family’s magic. Salazar doesn’t need to see further evidence of it to know that it isn’t the same color of golden magic that had once blended with Nizar’s Deslizarse-green flames. “Worse, it sounds as if all of us die before our great-grandson can be born.”

“Even Charles and Dorea? Charlotte? Sam and his wife Joan?” Henry asks, staring at the empty Pensieve.

“When the bloody hell did Sam get married?” Salazar asks, startled. “Was that child not just knee-high?”

“Don’t you read wedding announcements in the paper?” Monty asks, further hint of that desperate humor on his face. “Sam decided to fall head-over-heels in love with Joan Macmillan, Amfractus Macmillan’s daughter by his previous wife. Joan and Sam married in 1965 and had their son, William, the next year. He’s six years old now.”

Salazar nearly opens his mouth to wonder how Amfractus could possibly have a daughter old enough to be of marrying age before he reminds himself, once again, that he oft considers _everyone_ to be young. Amfractus was young when he took over the _Daily Prophet_ from his mother upon her death, yes, but already wed, and certainly with at least one child in the household, if not a multitude. “Is there anyone else I should concern myself with?”

Euphemia shakes her head. “Great-aunt Isobel has held on for a very long time now, but I don’t think she’ll make it through next year.”

“She’s sworn that she refuses to die until she’s seen her one hundred fifty-eighth birthday,” Henry murmurs. “I believe her. Saul…does James lose all of us before his son is born, as my wife believes? Even my distant cousins who still bear the family name?”

“We don’t know.” Salazar grimaces at four expressions of disbelief. “Nizar was literally told so little of his family that we did not even know any of your _names_. He wasn’t even told what his mother’s name had been before her marriage. It was not until today that I discovered her identity. If you truly want to know how angry my brother is about this lacking information, allow his portrait in the Willow House to inform you. He will do so, at great length, and with a _great deal_ of profanity.”

“You could have continued on with your plan of protection without sharing those memories, or the full reason for your intent,” Henry says.

Salazar pulls a face. “You say that as if I’ve never gained a reason to want to do so beyond a granted task. Good gods, Henry.”

Henry inclines his head. “My apologies. That was—that was uncalled for, but I think you can imagine how much you’ve upended our lives.”

“You upended mine first,” Salazar responds, smiling.

Henry dips his head again. “That’s true. What is it you now intend, as the cat is most assuredly out of the bag?”

Salazar runs his thumb along the edge of the Pensieve again. It isn’t Godric’s, but he’s starting to think it might have once belonged to Sedemai. It would have been a proper item for a mother to gift to a magical daughter upon her marriage. “I told you of my brother because he asked me to, though I admit I didn’t know it would be when James was still a child. I will say that I do not believe in coincidences. I didn’t need to search for any of you; Henry, you found _me_. I suspect that perhaps I was meant to tell you this, and what little we know of your fates, so that you will understand that the family’s endangerment goes beyond that of a mere Wizarding war on British soil.”

Elizabetha’s expression is hardened steel. “You just showed us memories that told us our family is wiped out but for a single child. I believe we’re already aware.”

Henry’s quiet, grieving weariness suddenly becomes narrow-eyed intensity. “You said there might be another attack today. You don’t know for certain, but it speaks well enough of what you expect. That was not a random act of violence on the train platform today. Those were organized, uniformed wizards performing a coordinated assault.”

“No, it was not random.” Salazar takes a breath. This is information that was not in the memories he gave to them, but that’s because it is easier to discuss. “Those you saw today are no longer the Knights of Walpurgis. That name was always a falsehood, a means of misdirection. Now that they’ve donned those cloaks and skeletal masks, Voldemort’s followers call themselves Death Eaters.”

“Goddammit!” Monty snarls. “Fucking Octavian Montague and his thrice-damned father! All of them, those bigoted bastards who sit in the Wizengamot and condescendingly talk of peaceful Pure-bloods guiding our society—they’re the ones who are wearing those damned cloaks and masks!”

“That they are,” Salazar confirms, watching as Monty gently untangles himself from his wife so he can pace out his temper.

“Forgive me; I know this has already all but become a discussion of war, but I’m still stuck on the idea of a portrait being the means of what is, essentially, time travel.” Euphemia’s eyes are a bit too large, her cheeks lacking their usual glow.

“My brother would say that we’re always traveling through time, as time is always progressing forward,” Salazar replies. “And as much as I love the telly program ‘Doctor Who,’ it doesn’t understand that traversing time in any other fashion than living it is not a simple endeavor. You cannot send someone forward in time if you don’t know the whole of the path, else you could end up in another’s future instead of your own. No, I don’t understand it much more than that. Rowena was the one to consult when it came to those sorts of scientific puzzles.”

“That does rather fit with the theme of my House, yes,” Euphemia admits. “How on Earth did that mental idea of _Preserving_ a living person succeed?”

“Necessity. Will. Power. The firm belief that it _had_ to succeed. We’d seen too much of the future not to be certain of our success. Nizar knew…” Salazar suddenly feels like he might choke again. He didn’t view his own memory of that last night beneath the Black Lake, but still those emotions would attempt to break him.

“Nizar did not know the wizard who once placed the tip of a wand to his forehead and sent him back in time by one thousand five years and five months, but as we grew older—by the year 1017, he looked at my face, and he knew.”

“For you, time is a circle.” Elizabetha gazes at Salazar in surprise. “My great-grandson knew already that the two of you must live, because it will be you who sends him to become who he must be.”

Salazar bows his head. That is as close as he can come to admitting fault for something he has yet to do.

Monty throws his arms into the air while still pacing. “A sodding _portrait!_ ”

Salazar sighs. “To my knowledge, nothing like it has ever been attempted since. That such a portrait is _not_ a mere portrait is known only to myself…and now, it is known to all of you.”

Henry shakes his head. “I don’t want my grandson to bear the grief of losing us, Saul.”

“James may have to, regardless of what you now know,” Salazar admits quietly. “Changing history is—without contingencies in place, it doesn’t work. For me, Nizar’s history became _my_ history the moment we met. Time literally won’t allow me to change our past, as it may break our future.”

“A mother’s sacrifice,” Elizabetha says in understanding. “If you were to save James’s future wife, another would have to take her place. Another would have to love that child just as much as his own mother does, because my great-grandson, and the world he lived in, must believe that history to be _true_. It could be easily be myself. Euphemia. Dorea. Any of us would be so willing.”

Salazar tries not to let on how much the very idea fills him with dread. Someone has to die in his little brother’s bedroom the night of Hallowe’en in 1981. He can’t volunteer for it to be himself, and can’t bear the idea of asking it of someone else. “Let’s not speak of it for now,” he says, to Henry and Monty’s immediate relief. “Nizar was right to say that I would need to know the shine of his mother’s magic to know if it is herself or another who dies that night. I prefer to avoid needless sacrifice whenever possible. Besides, I know already that it isn’t you, Elizabetha. The golden shine of your magic is not the same as the one my little brother bore.”

“And mine is sort of a blue-riddled bronze,” Euphemia murmurs. “I’ve only managed to conjure it to such an extent the once, but it isn’t the sort of sight you forget.”

“Green,” Henry says. “Mine is green, but not emerald. A bout of accidental magic as a child revealed it to me. I’m uncertain about Monty, Charles, or James, but Dorea claims that when a Black manifests their magic, it tends to be varying shades of ruby.”

Monty grimaces. “Mine is also green, like pine needles. Please don’t ask how I’m aware of this, as it is _truly_ embarrassing.”

“Most likely it isn’t one of us, then,” Elizabetha concedes.

“If the idea can even succeed—” Salazar starts to say, and then loses his balance and lands on the nearest chair. “Or perhaps maybe I’ll sit down instead of trying to explain what many consider to be impossible.”

“The Killing Curse.” Euphemia looks sheepish. “After those memories, I have to admit, I’d forgotten you were in pain.”

“More as if I need a bloody kip,” Salazar says. “This is not my first time suffering these effects. They will pass.”

“We have time,” Henry adds. His voice holds the same confident resolve that had seen them through the worst of World War II and the European Wizarding War. “We have until the end of July in 1980 to figure out what must be done.”

“No,” Salazar corrects him, though he hates to do so. “We literally do not know if any of you live that long. We have only as long as we have.”

* * * *

They don’t discuss Nizar, the attack, or Voldemort again until after supper. Salazar is glad of the reprieve just as much as he’s grateful for the opportunity to nap beforehand. At least when he wakes, he no longer feels as if he was beaten from head to toe with a blacksmith’s hammer. He’s fought battles in that condition and will not falter, but he’d much prefer to avoid doing so.

He wonders if Augusta Longbottom has already met the Hogwarts Express in Hogsmeade. If Frank has seen her face.

“The attack at the train platform.” Euphemia presses her lips together. “It isn’t just about politics, is it? That was simply part of the misdirection, as you called it.”

Salazar glances at each of them: Henry with his hazel eyes that are exactly like Salazar’s; Monty and Elizabetha with their identical brown eyes and the wild hair passed from mother to son; Euphemia with her Welsh complexion and sea-green eyes. “For the Death Eaters, they believe it is politics that drive them. For Voldemort, politics were only a means to an end. I don’t yet know if the Ministry will be willing to admit to the trail of magical deaths I’ve uncovered, but Voldemort began his war against Britain early last year. Today, his Death Eaters made certain that Wizarding Britain knows it is in peril, and it is a peril that will worsen until it is ended on the eve of thirty-first October in 1981.”

“But even then, it isn’t over. They’ll just think it so,” Elizabetha says.

“Foolishly so. My brother was once told by Albus Dumbledore that one of the other students in his year lost his parents to Death Eaters after Voldemort was supposedly destroyed. I suspect they were not the only ones to suffer such a fate.”

There are several different conversations held that evening. All are of consequence, but the one most pertinent to Salazar’s immediate future occurs when he, Henry, and Elizabetha sit down alone in the locked and warded parlor. Euphemia will help to heal those who need it, and Monty will fight, but Salazar is seated across from two people who are quite aware that they no longer have the reflexes to fight and survive another war. However, that does not mean that Elizabetha and Henry will stand by and do nothing.

Monty was briefly miffed by the idea of being excluded from any meetings that have to do with spying, but Henry explained the matter quite well: “It isn’t about exclusion, son. It’s about containing intelligence. Secrets should be known by as few as possible, so there are less avenues for another to discover what those secrets are.” Monty had been willing to accept that, appeased, and thus they are alone.

“You’ve never said, and I’ve never asked, satisfied as I was that you used no foul magic to do so…” Henry hesitates instead of speaking further.

“How is it I am still alive?” Salazar asks, the corner of his mouth turning up in bemused humor.

Elizabetha nods when Henry looks sheepish. “In the final memory of life at Hogwarts that you showed us, you appear to be the same age that you are now. Perhaps a year or two older?”

“Three years older. I conveniently stopped aging in the year 1043. As to how?” Salazar lets the bemusement become a true, brief smile. “One day I will tell you of exactly how well I knew three brothers named Peverell, but not tonight. I’m bloody exhausted.”

Henry nods in acceptance, though they are all aware that such a date may never come to pass. “I’ll be blunt, then. What do you need?”

“A way in. I never managed to cultivate a place among those idiots before Voldemort was banned from speaking in public,” Salazar says. “Once the ban was in place…”

“Spying on Death Eaters foolish enough to linger in public would not be enough, no.” Henry leans back in his seat and glances at his wife. “I have a few suspicions as to who might be willing to gain you that place, but I need time to confirm it.”

“Especially as I may have to begin the process,” Elizabetha says in a thoughtful voice. “There are several wives among those we associate with who are not comfortable with certain spousal decisions of late.”

“If it takes time, then so be it. I’d rather wait and gain the best results rather than the fastest, though I still would hope for it to be sooner rather than later.” Salazar regards them for a moment as the three of them sit in companionable silence. “I’d be wasting my breath if I asked you to remain within the wards protecting these lands, wouldn’t I?”

Henry shakes his head. “You know the answer to that already. I may not stand on a field of battle, but I will not hide. None of us will.”

“Take more precautions then, at the least. After someone blatantly tried to assassinate you, no one will complain if your every visit to the Ministry occurs amidst armed Aurors.”

“I would have insisted upon that, regardless,” Elizabetha responds dryly, glancing at her husband. “It’s been decades since the last war, my love. It is time for subtlety to hide beneath the appearance of weakness.”

“What about James?” Henry asks. “Is he safe at Hogwarts? It’s long been considered Wizarding Britain’s best sanctuary, but I’d rather hear those words from you.”

“For now? Absolutely yes, though I imagine Hogsmeade will see quite an increase in visiting Aurors and Hit Wizards during Hogsmeade Weekends.” Salazar hesitates. “I would pay more mind to James and his behavior, especially as his good manners may be something he chooses to leave at home for a time.”

“We’ve all four of us raised him!” Henry protests at once. “He’s a Potter, and—”

Salazar raises an eyebrow. “Were you not the one who told me that all Potters are good men with short tempers?”

Henry flushes in acknowledgement of the fact that he was just in the midst of proving Salazar’s point. “I suppose we’ll have to find out who he befriends and see if that affects his behavior, then.”

Elizabetha is the first to notice the expression on Salazar’s face. “Oh. That doesn’t bode well, does it? Who?”

“Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin…and Sirius Black.”

“Remus is Lyall Lupin’s son. I’ve heard he’s a bright lad,” Henry muses. “I haven’t had dealings with the Pettigrews outside the Wizengamot, though. Sirius is an utter mystery, but there are more white sheep among that lot than it often seems.”

“The kindest term Clarence Pettigrew has for his son is most often _middling_ when asked of his intelligence or magical talents,” Elizabetha says in displeasure. “However, Clarence does say Peter has potential, but despairs over the fact that Peter has not yet recognized or used it.”

 _Oh, he certainly has potential,_ Salazar thinks. _Alas, it’s aimed in the wrong direction_. “It’s merely something to keep in mind.”

“Of course,” Elizabetha agrees, though Henry pulls a disgruntled face. “I recently heard James malign Slytherins and immediately asked my grandson where he heard such things. He told me it was from _Hogwarts: A History_. I read the passages regarding Gryffindor and Slytherin within that book, and found a very clear prejudice.”

“My brother’s portrait does keep telling me not to read that book.” Salazar isn’t surprised that a book written in modern Wizarding Britain would malign him, but that it would also malign an entire group of children? That, he does not care for at all.

“You should continue not to do so,” Elizabeth says. “I told James he should pay no mind to such things, but he is an eleven-year-old boy. They often have their own firm opinions in these matters until life teaches them otherwise. I then mentioned my concerns to Euphemia and Monty, but they think it mere childishness that James will outgrow as soon as he is among other children. I hope they’re correct.”

“So do I,” Salazar replies, because truly, he does. What concerns him is that his brother’s portrait mentioned that even as a thirty-five-year-old adult, Sirius Black could not stop referring to Severus Snape as _Snivellus._ Perhaps it was only the damage of Azkaban speaking, but Salazar cannot stop suspecting otherwise.

“What of James’s future wife?” Henry asks. “If you recognized her today, you can tell us her name.”

Salazar slumps back in his chair, grinning. “Henry: to tell you of the friends your son began to make _today_ are one thing. To tell you of the girl who would be his wife is to invite meddling, however unintentional it may be. I will be avoiding both children as much as possible to resist indulging in such meddling, myself.”

Elizabetha smiles at Henry’s look of disgruntlement and pats his knee. “These things will work themselves out just fine without our interference. Consider it something to look forward to, my love.”

“If we live that long,” Henry mutters in resentment.

Salazar feels his heart clench. “I wish I could offer you certainties, but I do not have them. This part of the future is a mystery to us both. I’ve no idea if James will be able to introduce his future wife to our family.”

Henry clenches his jaw and then lifts his chin. “No, never you mind. It isn’t our survival I want you to concentrate on. James and his wife. Their child. If there is a way to return to your brother _and_ to yourself a part of the family believed to be lost, then that is what I would ask of you.”


	13. Of Import

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gods take it, why does everything of import wish to happen all at once?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flailing performed by @norcumii; most poking at words done by me while scowling at them. Any remaining errors are probably hilarious.

An Auror comes to visit the Potters the next morning. Salazar couldn’t have asked for a clearer sign that they are walking the correct path had he bothered to pray for one.

“Good morning, cousin,” Monty greets her at the door, kissing the visiting Auror’s cheeks before escorting her into the manor. “All is well this morning?”

“With myself? Yes, and thank you for asking. With the rest of Wizarding Britain? Merlin, no,” Lucretia Black Prewett replies. That she remains a low-ranking Auror after nearly thirty years of service is a sign of the prejudice and bigotry rampant within the Ministry. Many are frightened of her family of birth, while others scorn the family she married into. The rest are offended that her magical child died while her disdained Squib son leads a successful life. Lucretia should be Head Auror instead of Rufus Scrimgeour, and even Rufus believes so, but it was Barty Crouch Senior who made that decision.

Lucretia spies Salazar, and her displeased expression lights up in genuine, fierce pleasure. “Saul Luiz!” She strides forward, her hand thrust out; Salazar clasps her hand in the ladies’ grip that she has always preferred. “I haven’t seen you about in a very long time now.”

“Nor I you,” Salazar replies, which is partly true. He saw Lucretia many times while in the guise of others as Aurors worked in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, but as it wasn’t his face, it doesn’t count. “How is Ignatius? And Henry?”

Lucretia smiles at mention of her surviving son. Salazar knows she is rarely asked about him, as Wizarding Britain politely pretends he does not exist unless they are using his existence as a weapon against her. “Ignatius is quite angry about yesterday’s attack, and Henry is doing well. I admit I wasn’t certain about my son marrying a Dunbar, but Joy is a witch who loves a Squib without shame. I would tolerate her for that alone, but Joy is also intelligent enough to assist Henry with his business affairs. If I’d known Muggle accounting to be such an enriching prospect, I might’ve tried it myself instead of joining the M.L.E.”

“I’m glad to hear of his success, and of his marriage,” Salazar replies. Henry Prewett deserves happiness just as much as anyone, but even the more enlightened Prewetts among that clan are guilty of prejudice. They don’t treat Henry ill in any direct fashion, but they avoid him, and mention him only in the vaguest of terms. Salazar would like to shake the lot of them and tell them that Squibs are not without magic, else they wouldn’t be able to see Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, or the sodding _Ministry_ , but few will ever listen.

“What brings you here?” Monty asks, politely moving the conversation along.

“Your father’s miraculous survival,” Lucretia says dryly. “Though if Harry is still friends with you, Saul…”

Salazar grins. “Henry’s survival is not so miraculous, no. Just because the means of saving him wasn’t visible doesn’t mean it did not exist.”

“Of course.” Lucretia is already giving him a suspicious look, which is quite similar to the one her cousin Dorea mastered decades ago. “You want something from me, don’t you?”

“How would you like to help an old and respected war hero to fake his own noble death?”

Lucretia merely raises an eyebrow. “Will we be un-faking it at any point afterwards?”

“I hope so,” Salazar replies in complete honesty. He’s fond of this identity; there are still quite a number of years remaining until his appearance and his supposed age are too much in conflict for him to continue the ruse any longer.

He doesn’t think he’ll need worry about replacing the official records of Saul Luiz with another, not this time. Voldemort will die well before Salazar legally becomes too old for this name and role.

“All right,” Lucretia says. “Let’s sit down, then. I still need everyone’s statements regarding yesterday’s events done properly this time, which is why I’m here.”

“Before that…” Monty hesitates before sighing. “Have you heard anything about Frank and the other Longbottoms?”

Lucretia bites her lip. “Augusta pulled Frank from Hogwarts when the train arrived yesterday evening and took him home. Other than that, I know nothing. We’ve not even released—the forensic officers of the M.L.E. are still evaluating Robert’s body. I don’t know what the hell they think they’re going to find. Too many witnesses saw exactly what it was that killed Robert. It’s hard to miss that flash of bright green bloody light.”

Salazar nods. “There is thoroughness, and then there is stupidity.” Some things never seem to change.

“Exactly.” Lucretia sniffs once and then shakes out her hair. “All right; tell me what I’m about to participate in. Oh, and ply me with some proper tea for bribery. Have you lot forgotten how to be civilized?”

Monty smiles at Salazar, though grief for Robert still darkens his eyes. “This is why Aunt Dorea says that Sane Blacks are the best Blacks.”

Lucretia finishes off two cups of masala chai, though Salazar still prefers what Elizabetha does to mix the seasoning blend with coffee instead of drinking the spiced tea. “You want everyone to think you’re dead, but no one saw it happen. Do you think it’s a plan that can succeed?”

“The _Daily Prophet_ is fueled by bribery, and it doesn’t matter that I wasn’t seen,” Salazar replies. “What matters is how many people witnessed a Killing Curse being cast at Henry, and that Henry Potter is _not_ dead of it.”

“Good point.” Lucretia grins. “All right, then. Let’s get on with killing you.”

* * * *

This is not the first time Salazar has faked his death. It’s certainly far more annoying since he last did so in the early 1600s, which merely involved leaving the country he’d resided in at the time and never going back. After he built the Willow House in Sherwood-on-the-Marsh, the village has simply adjusted itself to the fact that there is an Elizabethan-era home outside the village proper, and a man named Saul lives there. Salazar didn’t even need to use magic to create the villagers’ lax attitude towards his presence; as Salazar hurts no one, and helps when it’s needed, they simply can’t be arsed to give a fuck.

Faking his own death in modern Wizarding Britain would be far easier if he claimed to be returning to Spain, and then had another send word of his “death.” That isn’t an option, though, as he is first and foremost providing an easy explanation for Henry’s survival of an assassin’s cast Killing Curse. He is also ridding Voldemort of the notion that a retired magical spy named Saul Luiz might be interested in poking about in his affairs.

Faking his death in a manner that will allow Wizarding Britain to easily recognize him as _alive_ again after the first war’s conclusion, however, means that the entire affair becomes _extremely_ annoying.

Rufus and Henry have to talk Minister Jenkins out of giving Saul Luiz the wizarding equivalent of a funeral of state. Salazar thanks Henry for making certain she didn’t do anything that memorable, and then mocks him, because Henry can certainly expect to receive the same treatment one day.

“She shouldn’t be suggesting it for either of us,” Henry retorts crossly. “None of our other British magical spies were granted that honor when they passed, and not our soldiers, either. The Minister is attempting to play favorites, and I’m not pleased by her blatant and _bad_ politicking.”

Dealing with the press is as easy as Salazar told Lucretia it would be. Amfractus Macmillan’s entire business structure for the _Daily Prophet_ revolves around bribery and blackmail. The newspaper is instead encouraged to print a simple death notice buried among other such notices, where it can be found by the aging gossips who like to discuss such things. They’ll be speaking of falsified information regarding a funeral that was small and private, followed by cremation, which should keep any busybodies or Death Eaters from trying to seek out a gravesite.

If Wizarding Britain continues on with their current habits, the death notice will be otherwise ignored. _Witch Weekly_ certainly will not print an obituary or a death notice, as that special bit of fluff won’t publish anything which doesn’t involve encouraging witches to be model housewives.

“Wizarding Britain still understands the notion of feminism, does it not?” Salazar asks, feeling a bit baffled by how bloody odd things have become in that regard of late. The Muggles are moving forward with expanding women’s rights. Wizarding Britain is not exactly ignoring the idea, or taking witches’ rights away, but they are certainly encouraging a rather specific ideal of feminine behavior. It won’t be the wealthy Pure-bloods who follow along those patterned lines, but those who are so used to being downtrodden already that they won’t notice yet one more way in which very few are controlling a vast many.

Lucretia growls under her breath. “Talk to Barty Crouch about that lack of gender equality within the M.L.E. No; punch him for me. You’re legally dead. You can’t be prosecuted for assault in Wizarding Britain if you’re dead.”

“I’ll be certain to bear that in mind,” Salazar promises, wondering how much of his father’s unbending ways might be influencing Barty Crouch Junior’s future behavior.

Unlike a forgotten spy’s death, the assassination attempt on Henry Potter can’t be ignored by the _Daily Prophet._ He is a Pure-blood of an ancient and noble House, a war hero who is respected even by members of the Wizengamot who are ravenously pro-Voldemort. Aside from a description of the event, dramatized within an inch of its printed life, only a single sentence explains how Saul Luiz’s sacrifice saved Henry Potter from certain death. Nothing else is said of who Saul Luiz was, or why he would do such a thing. Someone like Voldemort, with his cold eye for detail, will most certainly notice that a potential source of trouble is deceased, which is all that Salazar requires.

Granted, Salazar will one day have _words_ with Amfractus Macmillan regarding that article. The two wizards killed by Death Eaters that day are mentioned: Robert Longbottom has a fine paragraph to himself; the Muggle-born wizard has a single line that grants him a name, an age, and the notation that he was seeing a young daughter off for her second year of Hogwarts. The Muggles who were present and injured, some of them quite badly, are not spoken of at all.

Rufus folds up the newspaper with that day’s dramatic retelling of the “battle” on the train platform, tucking it under his arm. “We’ve managed to keep Barty out of this little scheme, but he’s a suspicious bastard. Almost as bad as young Alastor for that, but at least Alastor will trust me when I say I’m helping someone to work against Voldemort and our new band of wizarding vigilantes.”

“Terrorists,” Salazar says flatly. At least vigilantes are sometimes in the right to act as they do.

Rufus tilts his head a bit in acknowledgement before moving on. “I might’ve Obliviated the Minister of her recollection that you’re famous. Whatever you’re meaning to do, the way is as clear as we can legally make it.”

It is a sad thing when Obliviating others without their consent is considered legal, but Salazar can’t afford to fight that battle when so many others already await him. Aside from certain members of the Potter family, only Rufus and Lucretia are now aware of his continued survival. “Thank you, Rufus.”

Rufus nods in brisk fashion. “There’s a plan, then?”

“I’ll be cultivating trustworthy double agents among Voldemort’s lot, and you know I’ll make certain of the trustworthy part. I won’t be informing anyone of their names, but I’ll be teaching them two different code phrases. I’ll send those phrases to you and Lucretia by secure means within a week. The first will be a means of acquiring safety; if any of mine are captured by the M.L.E., they’ll ask for and tell that phrase to the pair of you. You’ll then be certain of whose side they’re truly on, and can make certain excuses and release them from custody—or engineer an escape blamed on the prisoner; I don’t much care which option you choose. If anyone ventures into the M.L.E., asking for the two of you while using the second code, it will be one of mine coming here bearing information that the M.L.E. should heed, especially as I foresee these attacks will become significantly worse.”

Salazar doesn’t mention that there will be times when they can’t say anything at all, and others may die for it. Rufus fought in Grindelwald’s war. He already knows.

Rufus sighs a bit and leans on his cane. “I want to wish you luck, but I also think you’re mad to be attempting this sort of subterfuge at your age.”

“I’m Henry’s age,” Salazar counters. It’s almost true, though he remains physically seventy-three to Henry’s seventy-eight.

“That’s exactly my point.” Rufus holds out his hand; Salazar clasps it. “The code phrases are a good idea, but I’d advise that your people not get caught by our side at all. I don’t have the best feeling about the Ministry and its ability to do the just and proper thing right now. Much like the attacks, I suspect that will only get worse.”

“Continue to think that, Rufus, because you’re most likely correct.”

* * * *

When Salazar asks Monty, Euphemia, Elizabetha, and Henry to come by Floo to the Willow House, it’s to introduce them to the heart of the house. The cellar is not much changed from when the house was first built, made from magically shaped stone. He’d then given the cellar a great stretch of magical space, so that it now resembles the vast stone cathedral more than it does a simple underground chamber for storing food.

“War planning?” is the first thing Henry asks after the expected remarks about the expanded cellar.

Salazar nods. “War planning,” he repeats, even if it makes it feel like his heart has taken on a great weight. “After the last war, that lot across the pond created a system of announcing military readiness in regards to combat. They call it defence readiness condition, or DEFCON for short. A level of five means all is well, even if the army trains and soldiers remained stationed at their posts and in their bases. Four is a condition of heightened readiness, the recognition that there is a potential for violence. Three means that combat is _expected_ , even though it may still not occur, and soldiers should prepare accordingly. Two is the sort you don’t want to hear, as it means an attack has already occurred and defences must be mobilized post-haste. DEFCON One would be the worst. Nuclear war has already commenced.”

“Given the rumors of how well the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are getting on right now, I imagine they’ve seen that DEFCON Three a number of times,” Monty says.

“They aren’t rumors, and yes, they have. We’ve already been close to DEFCON One at least twice with purpose, and at least once by accident.” Salazar smiles ruefully when those words are met by horrified stares. “That was an Earth-Speaker panicking a bit, and wondering if it was possible to call up the Earth to hide an entire island. Truthfully, I don’t think I’d be capable of managing it.”

“If the papers are any indication, Wizarding Britain would believe us to be at the—DEFCON Four, you said?” Elizabetha asks.

“They would, sadly. They would be wiser to think in terms of three, but for me? This is DEFCON Two.” Salazar pauses for a moment, taking in the soothing aura of the earth and her magic that currently surround him. “You’ve already seen basic warding and a Loyalty Charm at work to disguise this house during the European wars. For this war, that is not enough. Unless I tie you by magic to the keystone of my home, you would not be able to enter without my assistance even if you were given the phrase for the Loyalty Charm. The magic would not just repel you; it would possibly obliterate you.”

“Because you won’t lose your home to Voldemort’s war.” Elizabetha nods her understanding. “Where is this stone, and how do we do so?”

Once that is done, Salazar is the first up the cellar stairs. The earth practically sang in the room with the performance of magic within the bounds of the earth, especially earth that knows him so well. It was a bit overwhelming, but if he suffered any lingering fugue from the Killing Curse, it is most certainly gone now.

Elizabetha does him the courtesy of not taking over Salazar’s kitchen in order to put together afternoon tea, but assists him instead. She smiles in pleasure over the wide range of dried spices and fresh herbs available, particularly those from the East. Euphemia holds up her hands and shakes her head. Salazar is well aware of her lacking skill in the kitchen, as Monty was their cook while they resided in the village rather than the manor. The first time Monty heard the term housewife, he found himself an apron bearing such a title and magically altered it to read househusband. The servants in the manor find the apron to be hilarious.

Henry is not allowed to cook by servant’s decree, Elizabetha’s ruling, and Salazar’s aggrieved insistence. Salazar and many others learned in Europe, to their intense regret, that Henry Potter cannot be trusted with anything in the kitchen unless the desired result is painful inedibility.

“We’re thinking on what to tell Dorea and Charles,” Henry says after the meal is done. Monty is already away from the table, and it seems he and Nizar’s portrait are having a staring contest, if the silence and unblinking eyes are to be properly judged.

Salazar finishes sending plates and glassware back to the kitchen countertops. He hasn’t had so many guests in the house for quite a while. He’d forgotten exactly how many things need to be washed afterwards. “Regarding myself, I’m assuming.”

“You would assume correctly.” Elizabetha purses her lips over the tea she is blending before passing it over to Euphemia. “That should help with the pain in your fingers, _pi’ara_.”

Salazar rolls his eyes and then glares at Euphemia. “You’d not once mentioned that to me.”

“It’s recent, and Elizabetha has been a wonder when my own charms proved useless. You already have a Restorative you’ve not stopped brewing even while worrying about spying on that—that _man_.” Euphemia shakes her head. “Don’t you mind my aching knuckles. It’s most likely a side effect of whatever it is that has always ailed me, combined with the lovely inevitability of aging.”

Salazar gives her a stern look, as he will not be forgetting that, and she should know better than to think so. He already knows of three ways to alter the Restorative that won’t interact badly with Elizabetha’s enhanced tea. “Do you think Dorea and Charles would do all right with the truth, then?”

Henry raises both eyebrows. “My sister-in-law is a Black.”

“There is that.” Salazar mulls it over as Euphemia wanders over to join Monty. Dorea and Charles were already warned of the war’s certainty, and how violent it will be. They’d taken the warning to heart, even if two of the distant cousins had not. “I’d prefer if they didn’t know about myself in particular. That is dangerous, and Charles doesn’t receive the same sort of attention as you, Henry. Their best protection begins and ends with the wards on the home in Kensington. However, if you wish to warn them as to how specific the danger is to a Potter in particular?”

“You worry Charles won’t believe me,” Henry says in a wry voice.

“The man who refused to stop using the term Elemental Wizard, no matter how many times I corrected him and said Elemental Magician?” Salazar mock-scoffs. “Of course Charles will believe you. I foresee no difficulty at all.”

“Fortunately, Dorea is already prepared for war to come to her doorstep, especially after what happened on Wednesday.” Elizabetha frowns. “Will you be at Robert’s funeral?”

Salazar nods. “I imagine I won’t be the only busybody in Wizarding Britain to attend, either.”

“No,” Henry agrees, looking as if he dreads the experience. “Most likely not. Monty, stop staring at Nizar’s portrait. It’s rude, even if you’re staring at a magical impression captured in paint.”

“I’m not,” Monty protests. “I’ve just been thinking.”

Even Nizar’s portrait must have thought himself and Monty to be engaged in a staring contest, as he says, “You realize that portraits don’t need to blink, right?”

Monty rears back a step. “You sound like you’re from bloody Surrey right now!”

“Isn’t that what you called it the first time?” Salazar asks the portrait while Euphemia stifles a laugh. Salazar notices that Henry and Elizabetha are resting their laced hands on the table as they watch their son interact with the painting, and the weight in his heart becomes heavier still.

“Bloody Surrey? Oh, yes.” Nizar tilts his head. “Would you prefer I sound like this, then?” He switches back to the flow and pattern of speech the portrait has developed in the years since its last update in 1017.

“I’m not certain if that’s better or worse, to be honest. I’m also having a bit of a boggling moment of realizing that I had my best lessons in defence from my own grandson,” Monty says bluntly.

Nizar grins. “My advice? Don’t think on it too hard. It only grants you a headache, and not much else of use at all.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to be thinking on it rather a lot. I want to meet my grandson, and I have the feeling I never will,” Euphemia says softly.

Nizar’s grin fades back into a smile that is rich with understanding. “You don’t know that, and neither do I. Accepting defeat before you’ve even fought a battle means that you’re pretty much fucked, and I strongly advise against it.” The portrait waits until Euphemia’s startled giggle fades, and Monty is no longer biting his lip. “Besides, as long as nothing happens to this portrait—if the worst comes to be, anything you speak of with me, I can eventually tell to Myself.”

“That is so, isn’t it?” Elizabetha murmurs, smiling. “It may not be what we wish for most, but I’m grateful to be granted such an opportunity. I also do not believe in never, Nizar. By my faith and by my experience, I know there is more to the path of the soul than this world. Even if here, my great-grandson only learns of my words, I know that one day we will meet.”

Nizar considers her for a moment. “If you really do cross the veil before my idiot brother, look for my children. They’re all three utter busybodies with a vested interest in history and Voldemort’s wars. I highly doubt they’ve gone far.”

“Busybodies.” Henry glances at Salazar. “They take after their Uncle Saul, I see.”

For the first time in their long association, the name jars him. Salazar thinks on those many years; he thinks on how he won’t be seen in public with the Potter family again until this war is over, and possibly not even then. Death may yet still win this round.

“Sal,” he says, and swallows hard when Henry’s eyes widen in surprise. “My name is Sal.”

* * * *

The day before Robert’s funeral, Salazar receives an owl-sent missive from Henry. The message isn’t odd, but the fact that the owl found the Willow House at all is alarming. Between the renewed Loyalty Charm and the blood wards, neither man nor bird should be capable of finding his home. If he wants the newspaper, or his now scant mail, Salazar has to off and fetch it.

Salazar waits for the owl to hop from the windowsill onto his arm before taking her into the kitchen. He quickly discovers that the long-eared owl prefers patting and scratching in lieu of treats. She seems to be quite a loyal bird—

“Oh. I’ve not seen a true bonded familiar in a while. I imagine it was a complete accident, too,” Salazar says to the owl, who only leans into Salazar’s fingernails in an effort to happily groom herself. She might have flown a message to Salazar for Henry, but the bird feels strongly attached to Euphemia.

“And that would be why I’m being visited by an owl at all,” Salazar continues, speaking to a bird who likely wouldn’t care if he was spouting utter nonsense. The blood magic that allows Euphemia access to the house would recognize the owl as hers and consider it acceptable. It’s fortuitous timing, and makes Salazar hope that maybe fate is not stacked against them.

The name on the folded piece of paper is no longer that of his legally deceased identity. That would now be considered a marked oddity if Euphemia’s owl was intercepted by the large number of fools roaming about Britain.

Euphemia’s owl gets quite the workout that day, but she never seems to mind. If anything, she loves it.

“Hedwig did, too,” Nizar comments sadly. His little brother never stopped missing his snowy owl, but it’s always hard to lose a bonded familiar. Salazar avoids doing so as much as possible, but some creatures do not like being denied.

Gods, but he still misses Jalaf so much.

_Sal,_

_Well, they did try. Harfang Longbottom called for a point of order during this week’s Wizengamot meeting and demanded accountability for the fact that Octavian Montague was witnessed, unmasked, as one of the attackers during the “random assault” at Platform 9¾. William Montague handled it well, I will admit, pointing out that Octavian is an adult, not a child, and therefore not answerable to the whims of his father for whatever he may or may not have done. The slick bastard even agreed that the M.L.E. should be on alert and ready to apprehend Octavian “for questioning.”_

_Which, of course, will give Octavian plenty of opportunity to hide himself while the M.L.E. searches the Montague Estate, whereupon Octavian will return to his place of assured safety once that search is concluded. As to further investigations? “No resources should be wasted for a rogue element.” I truly hate how good Wizarding families in Britain have become outnumbered by loud, arrogant bastards!_

_Henry,_

_This is a prime example of why the continuing lack of representation for other magical families and magical beings is a stupid idea._

_William Montague is smarter than I gave him credit for. Perhaps it is only Octavian who is stupid, a trait surely inherited from his mother._

_Sal,_

_I’m all but certain Octavian and his brother Oliver are both fools, just as Deborah Carrow Montague was an utter fool before her untimely (fortunate) death. It’s their sister Helen, who just graduated from Hogwarts this past June, who may be the only sensible Montague born in five generations._

_No, never mind that last part. Elizabetha just informed me that Helen Montague is engaged to wed Theodore Nott Junior next summer._

_Henry,_

_It would be quite the blunder to assume all those who prefer Voldemort’s ways are fools, and yet they keep doing their best to prove otherwise. Alas that wars are built upon stupidity._

_Sal,_

_But one fights an oppressor with hope and determination._

_Henry,_

_Stop quoting Winston at me._

* * * *

A dead man can’t publicly attend Robert Longbottom’s funeral, but Salazar has known Robert since he was a lad still attending school. He will not miss this memorial, and attends wearing the Invisibility Cloak with the resolve to use _other means_ of defending against the Killing Curse if the service is invaded by Death Eaters. If he is going to be mocked further by his little brother for stupidity, he’d much prefer the words to be spoken by the man instead of the portrait.

Salazar has been to countless funerals, wakes, burials, cremations, memorial services, the spreading of ashes, pyres—all the forms of grief and the dispersal of human remains one man can encounter over the course of a thousand years. For some reason, Robert’s death hits him harder than any service he’s attended since the death of Isis. He isn’t certain he would ever be able to articulate why, though if asked, he might point to the grief on the face of a thirteen-year-old boy. Frank Longbottom never expected to board a train, wave goodbye to his father, and then have no knowledge for hours afterward that his father died just moments later. Augusta stands next to him with her hand resting gently on Frank’s shoulder, her face masked by a Burke’s typical unwillingness to grieve in public. By contrast, Algernon is weeping like a sieve while his wife Enid pats him on the shoulder, her lips pressed into a thin line of misery. Harfang weeps in silence, red in the face from the anger accompanying his grief. Callidora’s expression is cold, tight-lipped silence even when tears sometimes slip from her eyes.

The church the Longbottoms attend in Yorkshire is non-magical, which leaves the family’s neighbors to also cope with many a British wizard’s complete inability to properly dress themselves. Salazar takes a moment to roll his eyes in despair. It is not that bloody difficult to dress Muggle, and yet so many in this lot can’t manage the simple idea of trousers and shirt.

Wizarding Britain pays a great deal of attention to Robert Longbottom’s funeral. The entirety of the Longbottom family attends, as well as his close cousins among the Weasleys, the Potters, the Prewetts, The Sane Blacks, and the newest occupant of the Fenwick Wizengamot seat, young Benjamin Fenwick. Salazar recalls hearing news of the young man’s engagement, but there is no fiancé in attendance.

A few of the aging Yaxleys who still dwell in Cornwall, older siblings of Lysandra Yaxley Black, come to say farewell to her grandson. Salazar thinks it too bad that none of that lot hold the Yaxley seat, as whoever chose Cornelius Yaxley to sit in the Wizengamot was a demented fool. That one is a Death Eater through and through.

Phineas Nigellus Burke is the only other Burke in attendance aside from his cousin Augusta, which surprises Salazar not at all. His father Herbert is now in poor health, and doesn’t travel beyond the bounds of his own bed. Worse, Basil Burke, Augusta’s older brother, visited his ailing uncle and _convinced_ Herbert that the Burke seat in the Wizengamot should go to Basil upon Herbert’s passing instead of Phineas, the seat’s rightful inheritor. By the time the deception was caught, the paperwork had already been filed. For now, the Burke family officially stands against Voldemort, but that will only last until Herbert Burke dies.

The extra attention—and the press—might have mortified Robert in life. All of the families who are known to be publicly against Voldemort and his Pure-blood domination ideology send representatives, and all are those who knew Robert best. Edgar Bones and his wife Alicia for the Ancient House of Bones. A restrained set of six representatives from the massive Clan McKinnon. The Abbotts and the Sinistras. Aubrey and Rufus attend for Scrimgeour House, without a hint of arguing heard between them. The Marchbanks matriarch, Griselda, and her spouse William. Dexter Fortescue has always been firmly against Voldemort, but possibly he is attending in order to remind the others that they’re not required to die off before reaching their seventh decade. Rufus’s favorite Auror, Alastor Moody, trails behind his parents, Ailbhe and spouse Ciara. Young Moody gives everyone a look of angry paranoia that others seem used to receiving. The Bagnolds wear scarves and _kippot_ , a gesture of respect emulated by the Goldsteins. Both Crouch brothers attend; Barty has his wife Anna for company, but Caspar is lacking Charis.

Shafiq, Doge and Ollivander. Lovegood, Fudge, and Pryce. Bluebell and Max—even Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore, who keep to opposite sides of the building. Of those who were already anti-idiocy, only the Black-Hitchens clan is missing, but at least they have reason not to be here; travel delays ensured they couldn’t make it back from Mesoamerica in time for the funeral.

The new additions, the ones who have left neutrality behind, are pleasing to see: Applebee, Stivers, Brocklehurst, Brown, Thorn, Proudfoot, Kahlbridge, Diggory, and MacDougal. Not all of them have Wizengamot seats, but it’s a visible shift in allegiances.

 _Lines in the sand,_ Salazar thinks. Families that were neutral before Robert’s death are stating with their presence that they will be neutral no longer. For standing with the Longbottoms, they’ll find themselves standing against the Death Eaters—and against Voldemort. They’re all still outnumbered by fools, but Wizarding Britain has only been treated to the first volley of war. More families, Half-bloods, and the Muggle-borns who’ve adapted to Wizarding Britain will follow the example shown today. Others will turn away.

Leigh and Clarence Pettigrew, the Fleets, the Eastchurch family, the Smiths, the Blishwicks, and the House of Greengrass, those who still want to appear neutral, will most likely present their condolences and their excuses for not attending Robert’s funeral in public. Voldemort will then praise them for maintaining their “good status” in the Wizengamot, well capable of recognizing them as another means of gaining information from the Ministry.

The funeral also provides him with the first up-close look at Albus Dumbledore that Salazar has yet had outside of his little brother’s memories. Albus Dumbledore isn’t wearing full-length frocks of glitter and nonsense, as Nizar’s portrait often describes, though the man seems to be a firm believer in bright violet velvet trousers with a matching jacket, dyed in such a way that there are neon pink and metallic blue undertones in the fabric that make Salazar’s eyes hurt. He thinks, perhaps, that he would prefer the frocks of glitter.

Albus Dumbledore’s hair is almost entirely white, including a beard that is now of impressive length, though the surviving hints of ginger are fading into iron grey. Salazar dislikes that type of white hair, which tends to not want to reflect any of the color it is surrounded by. Aberforth was also a ginger, but his hair has gone entirely iron grey with interesting blue undertones rather than dull white. The younger Dumbledore appears gruff and irritable compared to his brother, but it does not take long for Salazar to decide that it’s a more honest expression than Albus Dumbledore’s polite air of sympathy.

The service has just concluded when Salazar’s head whips around as he hears the words, “How do you find being Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus?” falling from the lips of Dexter Fortescue. “I still miss it a bit, myself.”

 _When did this happen? Why wasn’t it in the newspaper? How did I miss this?_ Salazar wonders frantically.

Albus Dumbledore takes his time in answering former Headmaster Fortescue, which doesn’t help Salazar’s state of mind in the slightest. “It was a bit of a surprise, of course. None of us expected to wake on first August to find that Armando Dippet had abruptly decided the time had come to take to his deathbed,” Albus Dumbledore says. His eyes have an irritating twinkle to them, one that is inappropriate given the subject they speak of. “Of course, you know that Armando made me Deputy Headmaster a few years ago, just after Professor Wormwood’s retirement. We both thought it would be at least a decade before I might take up the post, but instead, I became acting headmaster on second August, though Armando only passed last night. The morning paper made the official announcement of both, I take it?”

Dexter Fortescue nods. “It did, at that. They wrote up a nice article in remembrance of Armando.”

That would explain why Salazar missed the news, as it is brand new. He’d put off viewing the morning paper in favor of arriving early for the funeral.

“I’m glad they were so considerate of Armando,” Albus Dumbledore says in a way that makes Salazar’s hackles rise. It’s a compliment Dumbledore has bestowed, and yet it is also implication of some sort of wrongdoing on the part of Armando Dippet. “He had no family left but his daughter, who wed into the McKinnon clan. I believe they’re taking charge of the funeral arrangements, so we should hear about it shortly.”

“Through the Wizengamot, no doubt,” Dexter Fortescue agrees. “You’ve been headmaster for nearly a month, then. How does it find you, Albus?”

“Oh, it suits well enough. It’s such a drastic change from teaching Transfiguration or the Deputy’s duties, but after dealing with the Wizengamot for so long, it also feels as if I’m not changing anything at all. It’s good to have Minerva McGonagall back at Hogwarts, too. She was one of the best Transfiguration students I ever had.”

“That one has a good head on her shoulders. She’ll be an excellent teacher of Transfiguration, I’ve no doubt. Head of House, I suppose?” Dexter Fortescue asks.

“Of course. I could think of no one better suited to the role. Minerva’s time in the M.L.E. certainly won’t hinder her ability to keep an eye on the troublemakers among my—er, _our_ Gryffindors!”

If Rufus hadn’t been ranting about losing one of his best Hit Witches to Hogwarts, that would be a surprise, also. What Salazar doesn’t know is what Dumbledore might’ve offered Minerva McGonagall to make her choose such an abrupt change of careers.

Then again, the Ministry is quickly proving itself to be a corrupt shambles. Perhaps Albus Dumbledore had to offer her nothing more than the means of her departure.

Dexter Fortescue gives Dumbledore a shrewd look. “And the hunt for a new DADA teacher? That was old Wormwood’s position when the previous teacher resigned, and then Madam Goldstein did the same this past June. She does have a lively infant to show for it, though, and doesn’t seem to miss teaching at all. A shame, really, given how difficult it’s been to fill that post this term.”

Albus Dumbledore hesitates for a beat. Salazar can’t decide if it’s intended to be a bit of dramatics, or if the pause is genuine. “During the final week of August, Lord Voldemort came to Hogwarts as one of the applicants to the position.”

“Tom Riddle?” Dexter Fortescue sounds surprised. Salazar quietly notes that whatever means Voldemort is employing to make others forget his original name, not everyone is affected by it. “You’d think that one would know better, given the current political atmosphere in Wizarding Britain.”

“I believe he was still expecting to greet Armando,” Albus Dumbledore says. “Armando remembered Riddle with fondness, after all. Alas for Tom, he greeted me, instead. I had no intention of hiring someone whose list of qualifications is based so strongly on performing Dark Arts rather than defending against them.”

“I imagine he wasn’t pleased.”

Albus Dumbledore shakes his head. “Not in the least. He swore I would come to regret my decision.” The man glances in the direction of Robert Longbottom’s casket. “Instead, I’m more certain than ever that I made exactly the right decision.”

 _The fifth Horcrux,_ Salazar realizes, tasting sour bile at the back of his throat. That is the rage against Albus Dumbledore that he has always seen, the fuel that drives Voldemort to create the final Horcrux he will make until fear drives him to do the same to an infant.

Dexter Fortescue is aged and wily enough to take Dumbledore’s meaning. “Who did you hire, then?”

“Oh, a bright young lady from the Applebee family. I have complete confidence in her. I’d thought it would be Calvin Kahlbridge, but he never turned up for his interview.”

 _Fucking hell,_ Salazar thinks darkly. He already knew that the fifth Horcrux was made within Hogwarts, but now he knows how Voldemort could have done so and have the act gone unnoticed. That Albus Dumbledore can be Hogwarts’ Headmaster and _not_ know of a murder occurring within her halls is alarming, but if his position was not made official until the first of the month…perhaps that is why.

The four Heads of House should have known. Salazar frowns; even if they were not within Hogwarts at the time of the murder, that shouldn’t have stopped them from—

No. It cannot be that they are not tied to the castle’s magic and her four Seats. Hogwarts would be foundering badly were that to occur. It is more likely a matter of being unused to what Hogwarts speaks of, or the Heads of House are bonded to Hogwarts improperly. At the very least, Minerva McGonagall would certainly not yet be in a position of noticing a murder, not when her ties to Hogwarts are so new.

Charlotte will need to be informed that her family should be concerned about the whereabouts of her cousin. Calvin Kahlbridge has most certainly not developed a sudden case of wanderlust.

Salazar slips out of the church, scowling. Minerva McGonagall is back at Hogwarts, teaching Transfiguration and acting as Gryffindor’s Head of House. Armando Dippet is dead, and chose his successor well before the event, possibly with prodding from Albus Dumbledore. Hogwarts’ guardians might not have the means to act as they should to protect her. Voldemort has created his fifth Horcrux, one that might very well have been the impetus for him to begin his war. Wizarding Britain’s first recognized losses have occurred.

Gods take it, why does everything of import wish to happen all at once?


	14. Another Unwanted Plague

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war begins in earnest. Not that Wizarding Britain really notices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheer-beta-read-flail by @norcumii. The Mate wants to know if we're going to need a new type of bunscale after I finished the chapter I wrote last night. (The answer is probably yes.)
> 
> Anyway: welcome to the Underground.

The same day Monty finally decides to take Salazar up on his offer of using the cellar in the Willow House for dueling practice, there is another “random” attack on Wizarding Britain. There are no deaths, but one of the McKinnon properties is burnt to the ground. It isn’t just a building that is lost, but all of the ancient treasures within, including paintings which doubled as records of the family history.

“God dammit,” Monty mutters at the _Evening Prophet_ , which is again bleating about lone wizards or witches acting against good and proper Pure-blood families. The idiots continue to ignore the fact that the primary targets on the train platform on 1st September were not Pure-bloods, but Muggles. This attack is only fueling that incorrect belief, which is possibly just what Voldemort intended.

Monty wanders over to speak to Nizar’s portrait while Salazar contemplates shoving the newspaper into his fireplace, which is where proper kindling bloody well belongs. It’s become a habit of any visiting Potter to speak to the portrait, sometimes for hours. Charles and Dorea had also done so, out of polite fondness rather than familial recognition, but now they both believe Salazar to be deceased. Poor Henry had to bear the brunt of his younger brother’s anger that they were excluded from attending the funeral, at least until Henry was able to tell them, in all honesty, that he was not able to attend it, either.

Salazar would prefer that Charles and Dorea know their anger is for naught, but it isn’t safe. He still endlessly worries about how their knowledge of his existence might endanger Elizabetha, Henry, Monty, and Euphemia.

“So, you’re telling me that our bloodline is a rubbish fire,” Nizar’s portrait says, which causes Salazar to lift his eyes from his angry perusal of the newspaper. “That makes sense.”

“A rubbish—no!” Monty scowls. “That’s utter nonsense.”

“The people who raised me wouldn’t think so,” Nizar responds dryly. “Which, I’m fine with, by the way. It would be an utter _delight_ to inform them that I’m one-eighth Jat Hindu, one-sixteenth Jewish, and a great bloody chunk of, ‘We don’t actually know, but probably Iberia once or thrice’—and that’s aside from my cousin Eneko’s Euskaran contribution to the family genetics.”

“Please don’t tell me who you spend your childhood with. If I survive this war, it might be far too easy to persuade me to kill them.”

“Oh, they’re just your typical modern day, lily-white English racists,” Nizar says blithely. “What the hell are holidays like in your household, Monty? How do you even practice Hinduism and Judaism at the same time?”

Monty’s expression gradually loses the scowl. “We don’t. Practice both, I mean. Not really. Granddad was still a firm follower of the ancient Brittonic holidays, even though he attended church and observed the major Protestant holidays, too. Grandmother remained devout and attended synagogue throughout her life, but she never wanted Dad, Uncle Charles, or my Aunt Lorraine to be forced to choose one religion or the other. Dad and Uncle Charles would both say they’re Protestant, but we celebrate the Equinoxes, the Solstices, and Beltane right along with the other church holidays, acknowledge Rosh Hashana, skip leavened bread during Passover, and you still won’t find dairy and meat on our dinner table at the same time unless it’s for one of Mum’s Jat holidays. She still celebrates all of those that the family adhered to, and never forces anyone to join her, but we do it anyway. I told James before he left for Hogwarts that with his upbringing, he’ll have plenty of ways to begin a conversation. James said that of course he would, as he’d be able to open every conversation with the fact that his background is cultural soup.”

“Cultural soup,” Nizar repeats, bemused.

“I think it’s fitting, that mix,” Salazar says. “Your mother’s best friend is a child from a Jewish wizarding family.”

Salazar immediately has both the portrait and Monty’s undivided attention. “You found my mother?” Nizar asks. “You hadn’t said.”

“It’s been quite a month, little brother. I finally saw her on first September, off to Hogwarts.” Salazar pauses. “And your aunt.”

“Less talking about my aunt, more talking about my mother and this mysterious best friend,” Nizar retorts. “You think it’s funny, else you wouldn’t be looking so bloody smug right now.”

“He would be a certain young boy from Cokeworth. Your mother’s parents were born in the village, but went away elsewhere for work, and retired to live in their home village again three years after my last visit.”

Nizar stares at him. “You’re talking about Severus Snape. My mother’s best friend is Severus Snape.”

“Most assuredly so.”

“I don’t know of a Snape family in Wizarding Britain,” Monty says.

“The lad is a Half-blood. Eileen Prince is his mother,” Salazar explains.

Monty’s eyes widen. “Oh, that poor kid.”

“Why is that?” Nizar’s portrait isn’t reacting at all in the way Salazar thought he might. He expected horrified bafflement, or perhaps laughter to accompany confusion. Not this flat-eyed, jaw-clenching _stare._

“Technically, there are no more Princes in Wizarding Britain. Eileen’s parents, Silvanus and Eden Prince, publicly disowned and disinherited their daughter for marrying a Muggle,” Monty tells the portrait. “The decision earned them quite a bit of backlash, even among the Pure-blooded idiots who now ally themselves with Voldemort. The Princes had no other children. By officially ridding themselves of Eileen, they effectively ended their own magical bloodline.”

“They’re utterly splendid people who raised an utterly splendid daughter,” Salazar drawls with as much sarcasm as he can muster. “The Bagnolds are on public record regarding the Prince family decision as saying that the Nazis did enough damage to their people, and they certainly didn’t need any further assistance in eliminating Jewish families.”

“Exactly,” Monty says. “I knew Eileen in school. She was utterly sour, but she didn’t deserve to be disinherited and disowned for her demeanor, or for her marriage. The worst thing is that her parents would be following right along behind Voldemort if they were still alive. Before he left the Wizengamot, Silvanus was one of the idiots pushing for Wizarding Britain to adopt Grindelwald’s ideals. As far as I’m aware, he shut up about that once it was discovered that Grindelwald supported the Nazis and their genocide, but Silvanus never apologized for what he’d previously said.”

“I don’t think ‘left the Wizengamot’ is quite the proper term. It’s more as if every other magical Jewish family in Britain considered them to be traitors. Fortunately for us all, Silvanus Prince is quite deceased.” Salazar looks at Nizar; flat-eyed anger has become expressionless silence. “Nizar?”

Nizar’s expression twists a bit, a sign that has so often been warning of an incoming thunderstorm. “He lied.”

“Who lied?” Monty asks, puzzled.

“Who?” Nizar bares his teeth just before the anger erupts. “Who the fuck do you think? ALBUS BRIAN PERCIVAL WULFRIC FUCKING DUMBLEDORE!”

Salazar raises an eyebrow, striving for calm. He doesn’t think he’ll much like this, either. “I’m all but certain those names were out of order, _hermanito._ ”

“WHO FUCKING CARES?” Nizar’s portrait shouts. “HE. FUCKING. LIED. TO. ME. AGAIN!”

“I have to keep pretending to like Dumbledore, you know,” Monty says in a mild voice, though his eyes are bright with anger. There is even a hint of the shine of his magic there, and it’s just as he said: the deep, blue-touched green of pine needles.

“ _Dumbledore_ is responsible for—”

“Nizar, stop! You can’t say anything else!” Salazar rests his hand on his chest, feeling as if he’s just been kicked. He hates that sensation. That is magic and Divination both warning him that they are about to stumble into a hornet’s nest of possibilities that _cannot_ be altered. Nizar’s portrait halts, looks at Salazar, and then stalks out of his own frame.

Monty rounds on Salazar. “What the hell is going on—are you all right?”

Salazar nods, the feeling already drying up to drift away. “If you’d known any further details, it might disrupt things that must be. Getting that sort of warning is always a bit of a shock.”

“Details.” Monty looks at Nizar’s empty portrait frame. “I already know the boy’s name, Sal. What am I to do if James mentions Severus Snape?”

“Trust your instincts,” Salazar replies. “You’ll know if what James says is something to be treated with casual acknowledgement, or a parent’s stern regard.”

Monty resumes glaring at him. “That was hint enough, Sal.”

“An unintended one. My apologies.” Salazar is just grateful he didn’t get kicked in the chest again by magic. “Do you know the saying, _Boys will be boys_?”

Monty looks surprised. “Yes, I know it. Why?”

“Because I bloody well hate it.”

Salazar can’t ask Nizar what he meant by Albus Dumbledore’s lie until Monty returns home to Somerset. “Nizar, _hermanito?_ ”

“Here, Sal.”

He finds Nizar in Isis’s portrait. Both of them are sitting on a sofa that must have been swiped from another portrait, one that Salazar doesn’t even own. He’s given up on asking magical portraits how they manage to do such things. Isis has her arm resting across Nizar’s shoulders in a gesture of comfort, just as she would have done for any of the village children who were in and out of the Willow House during their marriage.

“What did Albus Dumbledore lie about this time, little brother?”

Nizar doesn’t lift his head from whatever he is gazing at within the bounds of Isis’s portrait. “Dumbledore once told me that Snape kept an eye on me because he owed my father a debt. That was never true. Snape did it because of my mother.” Nizar abruptly jerks his head up to look at Salazar. “Just friendship, right? Not…relationship-friendship?”

“They’re merely eleven,” Salazar responds, but he does think on it. “No,” he says, and is even more certain after he voices the denial aloud and hears no dissent from his magic. “No, it is only friendship they share.”

“Good. I really don’t think I could cope with the idea that my mother once dated my bloody Potions professor,” Nizar says, and then changes the subject. “If my mum was there, what about my grandparents? Her parents?”

“They were there,” Salazar acknowledges. At least speaking of such things to his little brother’s portrait does not cause those vicious magical kicks. “Your grandfather’s health is not good. In fact, both of her parents appear far older than they should. Their names are Malcolm and Jane Evans. I’ll be looking into that part of your family over the winter. Would you like to place a wager on whether or not Albus Dumbledore lied to you regarding any surviving members of your mother’s family aside from Petunia Dursley?”

“ _Hermano_ , I do not take stupid wagers.”

* * * *

Salazar spends the whole of winter 1972 attempting to keep track of Death Eater assaults. He has dealt with tactics and military actions for most of his life, and easily recognizes that whoever it is coordinating these skirmishes knows exactly what they’re about. There are no patterns, only consistent facts. Death Eaters attack Muggle villages with small populations, villages in which it is not commonly known that the population is a mix of wizard and Muggle. They burn remote homes of adult Muggle-born wizards and their families; there are daytime attack-and-run assaults against Pure-blood families who refuse to allow the bigoted Wizengamot majority to have their way.

Everything Salazar learns, he sends as anonymous messages to Rufus and Lucretia. Even if the Ministry will do nothing, those two are plotting to collect vital allies among other members of the M.L.E. A disproportionate number of Aurors and Hit Wizards are Muggle-born or Half-bloods, the ones not afraid to get their hands dirty to protect a bunch of prig-headed Pure-bloods. Others among them are driven by desperation, the poor wizards from all classes of Wizarding Britain. That lot often have families to feed, a concern that outweighs any fear of dying while in the Ministry’s employ.

There are almost no fatalities to speak of, not yet. These skirmishes, these daytime hexes, are mere warnings. Voldemort is teaching Wizarding Britain how to fear, and that anyone who does not follow him is a target.

The Ministry of Magic refuses to admit that the Death Eaters exist, despite abundant rumor and the new witnesses who’ve heard Voldemort’s followers announce their names. Minister Jenkins stubbornly refers to the attacks as the work of insurgents, or as misguided and mislabeled political spillover from the Muggle conflict occurring between England and Northern Ireland.

“This isn’t like sodding Ballymurphy at all, you great twat!” Salazar seethes, crumpling up yet another newspaper for kindling. There are some in Wizarding Britain, particularly among those who Henry and Elizabetha call friends as well as allies, who refuse to believe the rubbish printed in the _Daily Prophet_. Too many others take Minister Jenkins and the Ministry at their word: there is nothing to fear as long as they avoid Muggle politics.

Salazar rolls his eyes when those words are spoken. It is no longer a matter of mere politics when blood is being shed in Northern Ireland, especially when most of that spilled blood is _not_ English. He briefly considers working to unseat Minister Jenkins, but the timing is wrong. One of Voldemort’s followers could easily be elected Minister for Magic in her place.

“You know, this would all be so much easier to cope with if Wizarding Britain was not already a fascist government,” Salazar says with an irritated sigh. “Voldemort’s brand of fascism does not yet look so very different from what the Ministry has to offer.”

Henry presses his lips firmly together before he lifts his glass, sipping at the cognac he brought to the Willow House to share with Salazar. James is home for the winter holidays, keeping Salazar away from the manor in Somerset. Elizabetha and Salazar did agree that perhaps Salazar’s tradition of granting a single gift to James should continue, though they will now be anonymous sendings for James to puzzle over. Salazar put careful thought into this year’s gift, followed his instincts, and sent a simple box with a plain but _excellently_ crafted blade meant for sharpening a quill. Accompanying it is a note in a magically crafted script, which Nizar’s portrait found most amusing: _Sometimes another needs what you’ve already been granted._ It will be interesting to find out what James Potter does with such a thing.

“I thought so, too, in my youth.”

“Did you?” Salazar asks Henry. “Specifically, you recognized the nature of Wizarding Britain’s fascist government, or…?”

“I recognized it, but did not call it fascism. Not then. I’m not certain I knew the meaning of the word in those days,” Henry admits. “But I knew that the way our government was arranged was meant to benefit very few while ignoring the plight of the whole. It was one of the reasons I agreed to take the family seat on the Wizengamot once my father decided to retire from politics. I was young and idealistic, and quite foolish. I firmly believed that if I spoke out, others would recognize that same truth, and together we could change things.”

“I don’t think that a foolish endeavor,” Salazar says quietly.

Henry smiles, a faint and tired expression. “I had no plan other than to attempt to change over three hundred years of tradition, Sal. You and I both know that such a thing is not easily done. I should have made alliances before opening my fool mouth. Tested the waters, as they say. Instead, I spoke. I will admit it to be an elegant speech, even now, one that Elizabetha helped me to write. The best parts are hers, though she’ll deny it. While that speech earned my House allies, friendships we’ve maintained through all these years…nothing changed. Not even Grindelwald’s war changed anything in Wizarding Britain. If anything, Grindelwald left us even more vulnerable to men like Voldemort.”

Salazar finds one Death Eater’s body after a raid fails. The man, a Pure-blood from the Blishwick family, is riddled with bullet holes. That possibly makes Salazar rather more gleeful than he should be, but this is the sign of a Muggle who successfully fought back. He needs evidence of such resistance, to see it and be glad of it. With each attack that results in injury, Salazar is left wondering if Wizarding Britain has forgotten the concept of self-defence entirely.

“For gods’ sake, these people have wands!” Salazar rants to his brother’s portrait. “They’re not defenceless!”

Nizar raises an eyebrow. “Salazar, do I again need to recite for you what my magical education was like before we met?”

Salazar lets out a growl of frustration and shoves another newspaper into his fireplace.

Euphemia sends him messages by owl, the first of which finally identifies her new familiar as Nerys. At least Salazar can now call the long-eared owl by her name.

_Sal,_

_Dorea would want you to know, if she didn’t currently think you dead: her grandniece Andromeda is pregnant with her first child, due in April. Well, Andromeda hopes it will be her first child of many, but my trained healer’s ears have listened to Dorea speak, and they are suspicious. Andromeda Tonks has been to St. Mungo’s more times than is typical for a wizarding pregnancy. They all claim the baby to be healthy, but that doesn’t settle my fears for Andromeda._

_They do know it will be a girl. Ted is apparently over the moon at the idea of having a daughter. Andromeda wants to name her Nymphadora, per the Black family tradition, though I suspect it’s also a means of spiting the family who disowned her. I don’t find as I blame her very much, and Nymphadora is a pretty name. Ted wants to name their daughter after his mother, but I know the Blacks. If Aitana is attached to this child, it will be her second name, not her first._

_Euphemia,_

_Congratulations to Andromeda and Ted, then. I especially like Ted’s refusal to put his Andalusian heritage aside. Who else has been breeding while my back is turned?_

_Sal,_

_Arthur and Molly Weasley have two boys now, born in 1970 and 1971. Their names are William and Charles, though Bill and Charlie have quickly become more commonplace. They’re adorable gingers, just like their parents. Bill takes after the English Weasley side of the family, while Charlie is most assuredly an Irish-descended Prewett._

_Euphemia,_

_TWO SONS IN A ROW?_

_Sal,_

_I know! But Cedrella certainly isn’t the sort to be hiding any secret pregnancies, especially not when the Weasley clan will let a successor of any gender inherit land, vault, and the Wizengamot seat. They had three sons, and now Arthur and Molly look to be repeating the pattern. One has to wonder what they’re doing so differently from other Pure-bloods in Wizarding Britain. If there is a method, some of us are wanting to have more children!_

_Euphemia,_

_Or someone cursed them to have only sons. I do know that Cedrella was rather fond of the idea of having a daughter._

_Sal,_

_Oh, bother. Dorea heard me say that and immediately thinks it’s exactly that. It does make me wonder if you can you curse someone with excessive fertility._

_Euphemia,_

_That one usually comes with unwanted side effects, such as never being able to stop bearing children. I don’t recommend it. Is anyone else expecting or carting about new offspring? I’m afraid I’ve been a bit too distracted of late by fools in masks to devote time to the Prophet’s back-page announcements._

_Sal,_

_Henry and Joy Prewett are still trying for children, but with no success. I’m sure you recall that John Morgan’s son Robert wed Alice Bainbridge in 1956, but only now are they going to greet a child. Sometime this spring, I believe. We’ve also finally heard that John’s daughter Anna, the one who married that nice chap from Cairo in 1957, had a daughter in 1970. I’ve not yet seen a photograph, but now that I’ve asked her, Madam Morgan won’t stop talking about how her first grandchild is the most beautiful baby to ever exist._

_Euphemia,_

_I sense jealousy._

_Sal,_

_Mostly I just want to slap Madam Morgan for being so insensitive. You’d think a war widow would know better than to crow about babies in front of those who’ve been cursed by a lack_.

To her credit, little though she deserves it, Minister Jenkins stops blaming the violence in Wizarding Britain on the conflict between Northern Ireland and England after the Bogside Massacre at the end of January. She still will not call the Death Eaters by their name, or refer to them as anything other than rogue elements of wizarding society, but at least she’s no longer blaming the Irish.

To distract himself from wanting to strangle a multitude of magical politicians, Salazar concentrates on the Evans family. Now that Lily Evans is safely back in Hogwarts, he can do so without fear of running into her, or with encountering Petunia, who is attending a distant boarding school at her own request. Petunia Evans might be a hateful young woman, but her grades are enough to see that her schooling is paid for by scholarship. Salazar is glad of that, at least, as it quickly becomes obvious that her parents would not have the financial means to send both of their children to a private school. Hogwarts has a number of scholarships for magical students from struggling families, but the determination is made by that ridiculous governing board. As that board is currently staffed with enough Death Eaters to constitute a majority, it will be specific sorts of student who will receive those scholarships, and it will not be Muggle-borns like Lily Evans.

It’s the school itself that momentarily distracts Salazar from his purpose; Petunia Evans is attending St. Mary’s in Surrey. He often says that there are no coincidences, and here is yet more evidence that he has long been correct. Petunia’s choice of school explains how she will meet Vernon Dursley, or has likely met him already. Vernon Dursley’s sister, Marjorie, was in her final year of schooling and serving as Head Girl when Petunia was a first-year. He wonders what it is about Marjorie and Vernon Dursley that would have been so appealing to Petunia Holly Evans that she would remain in contact with either.

According to the birth certificate copy that Salazar attains by means that are not even remotely legal, Jane Evans was born Margaret Jane Riley in April 1913, but in Lancashire, not Cokeworth. Salazar is puzzled by that until he finds an old news article in a tiny Lancashire newspaper archive. A shipping yard incident in Glasson Dock took the life of Irish immigrant Sean Riley, aged thirty-two. Brief mention is made of newly widowed Irishwoman Líle Callan, aged twenty-nine, and English-born daughter Jane, aged three. The two are said to be moving to a village far to the south, where the young widow has found work to support her child—no. Children. Líle Callan Riley was pregnant when her husband died.

Líle is the Irish spelling of Lily. Nizar’s mother is named for her grandmother.

Salazar sits back from the microfilm machine, rubs his eyes, and thinks idly about cursing Cokeworth’s library. If he wants to find any potential news articles regarding births or deaths in that village, he has to search through actual stacks of aging newspapers that have never been transferred to microfilm. Not only that, he has to enter the library after closing, lurk in the dark like a burglar, and sift through newspapers by wandlight. Those who run that particular library are tyrants who trust no one, especially a man who isn’t a born-and-bred local.

He shakes his head and makes certain he performs the rest of his research regarding Lily’s father. Then Salazar can go haring off in search of this new mystery child.

Malcolm Edward Evans was indeed born in Cokeworth, in October of 1914. His father was a factory worker and former miner from the Yorkshire Dales named Edward Evans. Just like his father had been, Malcolm Evans was a miner for most of his working years. It’s the sort of hard labor that would certainly cause his current physical difficulties and poor health. Edward Evans’s wife, Lily’s paternal grandmother, was named Rose Ravensloft, late of Skipton before the new family moved south to Cokeworth.

“Was it that soon, then?” Salazar wonders aloud, resisting the urge to trace the microfilm’s magnification screen with his fingertips. Ravensloft is similar to the much older Ravenscroft, though he doesn’t recall when Phoebe chose the name. Rowena’s rather unexpected addition to her family wanted to acknowledge the man who’d been her grandfather, as well as her great aunt, while still choosing to stand on her own.

Salazar smiles. Helena had absolutely loathed Phoebe. Not because Rowena’s grandniece was an awful lass, but because Phoebe had intelligence enough to nearly outshine both Helena and Rowena. He’s not certain Phoebe ever understood why Helena thought they were such rivals, especially as Phoebe preferred to make jewelry rather than expound upon the words of ancient scholars. It had not even mattered that Salazar and others reassured Helena, so many times, that if it was beauty and wisdom she wished for, she already had the utmost of both.

Phoebe had been the one to make Rowena’s diadem, a laughing raven’s outspread wings etched with Rowena’s favorite witticism. It had been both gift and gratitude for the woman who’d accepted Phoebe despite her origins. Rowena had held only one familial regret before Helena’s departure and subsequent murder; she did not get to meet the half-sister that her then-unwed father accidentally sired while on military campaign for East Francia’s king.

Helena had stolen the diadem before leaving Hogewáþ not only out of a desire to outshine all with her brilliance, but also as an act of petty revenge. Salazar tried to find the diadem while he lived in Greece with Ismene centuries later, but “west of Greece, in the bore of an eastward-leaning tree” did not exactly narrow down potential locations for a stolen and lost bit of jewelry. He still suspects that Helena’s spirit was vague on purpose, that she wanted no one to find the reason for her shame.

“Ravensloft,” Nizar’s portrait repeats when Salazar brings him the news. “I wonder if that’s why Mum’s parents were so excited about her being a witch.”

“Excited?”

Nizar nods. “Yeah. Aunt Petunia told me. She was exceptionally fucking bitter when she did so, but it’s probably the most honest thing she ever said to me. Her parents—my grandparents—were thrilled to have a witch in the family.”

“Possibly because they already knew what it was like.” Salazar had a similar thought. Rose Ravensloft is now deceased, but she and her husband lived long enough to witness her son’s marriage to Jane Riley in Cokeworth before he pursued a career with Daw Mill. If Rose Ravensloft was a witch, both son and bride were old enough to be well-versed in what such was like. “I’m not so concerned right now about Rose Ravensloft’s potential magic. What matters is that your mother had an aunt, one who no longer dwells in Cokeworth.”

“My mother had an aunt who could have died at birth, have died since then, or could be practically anywhere else on the planet,” Nizar counters. “You might wish to start with finding her name, Sal.”

Salazar finally locates a birth certificate for Naomi Shawna Riley. The girl was born in Cokeworth in January 1917 in a home that has since been torn down and replaced by terraced housing. “Named for your father, but the pair of you have Anglicized names.” Wise of their mother, if depressing. Fifty-five years later, and still England is not a safe place to be Irish.

What Salazar does not find is any date of death. Not in Cokeworth, at least. He goes back to marriage records and commits more acts of privacy violation and thievery. Naomi Riley wed in 1941 at age twenty-four, shortly after the Blitz stopped hammering London. The groom’s name was Matthew Godwin from Kingston upon Hull, also twenty-four.

“Bloody _Hull?_ It’s like you lot are trying to make my job harder,” Salazar complains, but off he goes to the riverside port in East Yorkshire.

Hull gives him a number of answers, and does an excellent job of renewing his rage against Albus Dumbledore. “As of right now, you’ve a still-surviving great-aunt named Naomi and three first-cousins-once-removed, all who have spouses. One of those spouses is already expecting a baby to grant you another cousin.”

“So, either they’re somehow all dead by 1981, or…”

“Or Albus Dumbledore is going to be turned inside out by my wand and stretched across the Channel to act as a bloody windsock!” Salazar growls. “Nizar: I can’t tell anyone.”

Nizar’s portrait is running his thumbs along the knuckles of his clenched fists. “I know. It wouldn’t be safe, not for anyone involved, and that’s not even considering how we might be bloody well _interfering_ again.” He unclenches his fists and stretches his fingers. “You’re the Seer, Sal. How likely is it that they’re dead in 1981?”

“I really didn’t want you to ask me that question.” Salazar runs his hands through his hair and realizes he needs to trim it again. “Your great aunt, perhaps, but the rest?” He shakes his head. “It’s not necessarily set in stone, but in regards to what I sense right now, they’ll still be alive.”

“Then we’re still at, ‘Fuck Albus Dumbledore,’” Nizar says.

“ _Hermanito_ , I would much rather we just kill him.”

Nizar smiles. “Here’s hoping Myself agrees with you, then. Is there anything to be done about Mum’s parents?”

If Salazar had hoped there would be no questions regarding the rest of the Riley clan’s fate in 1981, he’d desperately wanted not to be asked this. “Another magical kick to the chest, little brother. For Malcolm and Jane Evans, there is nothing I can do.”

Salazar has not yet received any such warning regarding the Potters. He dreads the day when such might finally happen.

* * * *

On a beautiful day in April, Euphemia’s owl brings Salazar a brief letter from Elizabetha. Salazar gives Nerys her usual demanded scratching while he unfolds the message.

_Sal,_

_You have a meeting in London. Leicester Square, 1:00 p.m. tomorrow. Appearances matter._

“And you are not referring to my wardrobe, either.” Salazar sends Nerys home, and then stores the message with the others he has secreted away in the cellar in a place no one can see but himself. He spends his evening wondering who among Elizabetha’s Pure-blood acquaintances is ready to be rid of Voldemort.

Salazar isn’t fool enough to wander into Leicester Square directly. He arrives at 12:30, finds a café that will grant him a good view of the square, casts an excellent glamor, and enchants a mirror to warn him of anyone entering the square who carries a wand.

The mirror flashes for his attention at 12:55. Salazar sips at his coffee, using the gesture to hide the way his eyes flicker among those wandering the square. He finds her sitting down on a bench across from the fountain, a witch whose appears fits in well with both Muggle London and Wizarding Britain. She wouldn’t be remarked upon in Wizarding Britain at all, though the Muggles might think her either overdressed or wealthy.

They would be correct on the latter assumption. Desdemona Bulstrode Dunbar is the recent widow of Michael Dunbar, who was quite well-off even by wizarding standards. Madam Dunbar also possesses her own vault, an inheritance from her mother that no Dunbar may touch unless she decides to will it to one of them rather than assigning it to the next Bulstrode matriarch.

Desdemona Dunbar dressed well for this meeting: a black jacket and matching skirt with green-yellow penciled lines; a white blouse with just enough lace flounce at the collar to be fashionable instead of outdated; a silver broach with a stone that leaves no doubt that she wears a real ruby, not a glass imitation. She has no hat, something that would be commented on by Muggles in this sort of weather, but is wearing gloves that are gripping a solid black cane with a smaller top, no doubt the location of her wand. Her gloves are the same shade of green as the stripes in her clothing, making them a tasteful match rather than an eyesore. Her bronzed-brown hair is bound, still mostly dark with only a hint of silvering; her eyes are dark Mediterranean blue, but Salazar has seen her up close before, and knows that flecks of grey and copper lurk in that particular ocean. Her skin likewise has the olive cast common to the Mediterranean, though it is pale from a life spent mostly indoors in a country whose sunshine is sporadic and unpredictable.

Desdemona Dunbar looks to be fifty-four rather than the sixty-eight years of age she can rightfully claim. Salazar decides upon a test of patience, curious to see how Desdemona Dunbar copes with those who choose to be fashionably late.

At 1:05, Desdemona Dunbar’s lip twitches on one side and turns downward, but otherwise, she does not react. She seems quite content to watch the Muggles around her, but her posture remains firmly upright, her chin lifted. Her gloved fingers never stray too far from her wand.

“I like you already,” Salazar murmurs, and leaves a few notes on the table to cover his meager tab. He stands up, rids himself of the glamour, and wanders over to the square while keeping the fountain between them. That slight downturn of her lip remains her only show of impatience, despite the time now being 1:15.

Salazar settles down on the edge of the fountain, now facing her. With his wand at the ready, hidden in his jacket’s right sleeve, he waits.

Desdemona Dunbar’s eyes find him not long after. They widen just slightly in surprise, but otherwise her expression doesn’t change a whit, nor does she move. Salazar approves. He wanders over to the bench she is seated upon, dropping down onto the other side in an apparent, uncaring slouch, as if intent on ignoring his seatmate.

“Desdemona Bulstrode Dunbar. This is quite the surprise.”

She glances at him from the corner of her eye. “Saul Luiz. You would be the man who is organizing hidden resistance against a certain ridiculously named individual.”

“That I am.”

Desdemona Bulstrode returns her gaze to the fountain. “Hmm. The news of your death seems to be a bit exaggerated, then.”

“It’s quite easy to fake your death in Wizarding Britain, especially when the entire system is fueled by bribery.”

Her lip twitches upwards, though her expression is otherwise impassive. “Perhaps. I have to admit, I had my doubts about today, but to find Saul Luiz? Hero of the European Wizarding War, the man who assisted, from beginning to end, in defeating the threat of Grindelwald?” Her dark blue eyes gleam with amusement. “Elizabetha was correct. This really will be a worthy way to spend my time.”

“I hope it will be,” Salazar replies honestly. “Please let us not mention names in such a public manner again. I am certainly proof enough that there are spies to be found everywhere.”

“Then I’ll say it is a pleasure to meet you, man whose name I shall no longer mention in public.”

Salazar laughs. “Oh, I _definitely_ like you. Have you dined yet this afternoon, madam?”

“Not yet. I admit that my appetite is lacking when I’m on my way to clandestine meetings in Muggle London that could potentially see me murdered,” Desdemona Dunbar says dryly.

“Then we’ll start with that,” Salazar says, standing and offering her his hand.

Desdemona Dunbar accepts his assistance, though she retreats back to the cane once she is on her feet. Salazar walks with her to a lovely restaurant of much higher quality than he usually frequents, one that serves delicate biryani rather than a sturdier, spicier curry.

“I take it you aren’t dead in Britain at large,” Desdemona says after insisting, quite firmly, that he is to call her by her first name alone unless formalities require otherwise.

Salazar first responds by casting a strong privacy charm that Desdemona appears to appreciate. “Not at all. That is much more difficult, and would be inconvenient, besides. Gaining new Muggle legal identification under a new name is pointless anyway, given that the enemy wants nothing to do with Muggles unless it’s to be rid of them,” he replies. “You may call me Saul, or Sal, as long as you do not pair the first choice publicly with the surname of a man meant to be dead in Wizarding Britain.”

“Sal, then.” Desdemona neatly unrolls her tableware to place on either side of the empty plate waiting to be filled. “You’re right in that the enemy isn’t interested in learning anything of Muggle doings. I actually rather enjoy it here, though it’s a secret I’ve had to keep from my family since I became old enough to venture into London by myself. My parents would not have approved. My spouse would have been of similar thought.”

“You do seem to be the only member of your family who is not a Death Eater.”

Desdemona nods. She is unsurprised by the term Death Eater, most likely because all of her siblings proudly bear the title. “At least I still have two young nieces who can still say otherwise.”

“I am also sorry for your recent loss.”

“You mean Michael?” Desdemona takes a sip of her tea. “We got on quite well at first, but towards the end, he decided his admiration for Voldemort was all he cared for. I find I do not miss my husband very much. What I regret is the influence he held over our children. They are adults, and thus they make their own decisions. I’d just hoped to have raised children who were not so insistent upon making _stupid_ choices.”

“I also would not appreciate being surrounded by familial idiocy,” Salazar comments.

Desdemona gives him the shrewd look of a true Slytherin. “What do you know of me, Saul Luiz? It seems fair, given I know quite a bit about you due to the European wars.”

“Less than you’d think,” Salazar says, which seems to please her. “You are the eldest of four siblings and thus the presiding Bulstrode matriarch, even if it is your brother sitting in the Bulstrode Wizengamot seat. You had three children of your own with the unlamentedly deceased Michael Dunbar. Your youngest son is Bradford, engaged to wed Cicily Greyback next year, but they’re still undecided on the date. Bradford dithered on his engagement because of Cicily’s much older brother, Fenrir, a werewolf infamous for attacking children. That one gives werewolves who mean no harm to anyone a foul reputation, especially now.”

When Desdemona does not react to his defence of other werewolves, Salazar continues. “Your next-eldest child, Odette, married Albert Davies. They do not yet have children, but given Albert’s often lacking hygiene, I have to wonder at Odette’s taste. Your eldest child, Alexandra, was born quite soon after your marriage to Michael, enough so that it was commented on. The gossips ceased to care once Michael declared that only a son would inherit the majority share of the Dunbar fortune, and thus it will be Bradford who sits in the Dunbar seat you currently occupy on your deceased husband’s behalf.”

“Would that I could hold it longer,” Desdemona says. “I instead hope that my son will be as slow to sire children as he is in making up his mind about his wedding date. Bradford can’t take the seat until he has a male heir.”

"Alexandra wed Dorcus Carrow almost before she’d shed her Hogwarts robes upon graduation. She then gave birth to a baby girl with an unrecorded fate.”

Desdemona looks surprised. “Very few know of that.”

“It was actually a supposition based on birthing trends in Wizarding Britain.”

“Ah, yes. The infamous Pure-blood curse.” Desdemona gently stirs a bit more sugar into her tea before placing the spoon aside. “If a girl is born first, one has more children; if a boy is first, the well runs dry. I know of far too many Pure-blooded families who refuse to let anyone other than a son inherit their lands and vaults, and the Carrows are one of the worst offenders. It’s an utter mockery of the equality Wizarding Britain purports to maintain. The child who would have been my eldest niece deserved better.”

“It is a mockery, and yes, she did,” Salazar agrees. “After that lost daughter’s birth came Quintin Carrow, who is now seventeen. The twins Amycus and Alecto are fifteen. Those three are schooling in Hogwarts right now, Sorted to Slytherin, while nine-year-old Blanchette must wait to join her siblings. In the meantime, your sister Eleanor remains unwed, and that seems unlikely to change given her attitude towards marital bliss. Your other sister, younger Lauranna, is being courted by Dagger Fleet and Marcus Hobart, but has yet to make up her mind as to which of the two idiots she finds preferable. The youngest of the four children raised by deceased Harold Bulstrode and Mildred Fawcett is your brother Alfridus, who wed Majora Runcorn after a failed courtship with Heliotrope Rothschild. I’ve no idea why he chose as he did; your brother wants heirs, and Majora Runcorn is against the idea of children. I suspect she will probably bear one anyway, if only so her husband will be silent about it afterwards. He’ll certainly not be claiming Esmerelda, if only to spite a mother that cares nothing for her at all.”

“I believe it will be a cold day in Hell before my foolish brother recognizes an illegitimate child,” Desdemona says. “Spite is secondary.”

“For the child’s sake, I’m glad your brother is such a fool.” Alfridus Bulstrode has always struck Salazar as foolish, yes, but a slippery one, a man who always bears in mind the dangers involved in being caught. “That being said: did I miss anyone?”

Desdemona shakes her head. “That was as precise as if you read it from a genealogy tome. I was right; you’ve been watching the Death Eaters since they introduced themselves to Wizarding Britain last September.”

With that, Salazar is finally able to say something that rattles Desdemona’s composure. “No. I’ve been watching Voldemort, and keeping an eye on who gathered to listen to his speeches, since Tom Marvolo Riddle returned to Britain in 1961.”

Desdemona waits, barely breathing, as their waiter returns. After sitting the serving dish on the table between them, the lid is removed. Steaming lamb biryani is delivered to their plates before the waiter replaces the lid and makes a swift, professional retreat. “You remember who Voldemort used to be.”

“I do.”

She takes a moment to appreciate the quality of the biryani. Salazar has to admit that the lamb is excellent, though he’d prefer the figurative hole in the wall’s biryani, as they aren’t afraid to offend the English palete with stronger flavors and spices. “Very few recall the name Tom Marvolo Riddle. The sole man I’ve encountered who remembered Lord Voldemort’s true name seems terrified to speak of Voldemort that way, as if worried that his beloved Dark Lord will discover his inconvenient recollection of Voldemort’s origins.”

“I have never forgotten, and I never will.” Salazar still hasn’t discovered if it is enchantment, fear, or willful disbelief that keeps others from recalling Voldemort’s past. If it’s an enchantment, it is an excellent one that is well-hidden; if it is willful disbelief, that is a battle that will not be easily won. “I also have not forgotten what fascism sounds like.”

“No. I suspected that you had not,” Desdemona replies. “You were young during the war, and I’d read nothing that would hint at your death until the day after the attack at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Imagine my surprise when the contact Elizabetha arranged for me to meet today turns out to be the very man whose loss I’d mourned, hoping as I was that his abilities could be used against the Pure-blooded fascism we speak of now.”

Desdemona puts down her tableware and regards Salazar intently. “I am in a prime position to be a master spy’s excellent tool, yet I have no one trustworthy to serve.”

“Because your entire family believes you to be loyal to Voldemort’s cause, as you’ve given them no reason to believe otherwise.” Salazar leans back in his chair, a relaxed posture that often makes Pure-bloods despair of his upbringing. “I’ve been looking for a way to get back into Voldemort’s secret meetings since he was banned from holding them in public places.”

Desdemona smiles. “How convenient it is, then, that I am welcome at every gathering the Dark Lord holds.”

Salazar holds up his glass of water, tilted forward. “It’s no bit of bubbly, but…”

Desdemona merely accepts the toast for what it is. “To ridding this island of another unwanted plague.”

“May the plague end swiftly,” Salazar replies, trying to ignore the guilt caused by a statement that he knows to be a lie.

* * * *

Salazar’s first meeting with Death Eaters occurs at the end of the month, inside the Carrow Estate. The home doesn’t gleam with the extravagance of others Pure-blood manors he has seen, but it is very large. That, it seems, was a major factor in why it was chosen, as the estate’s halls and parlors are _crowded_ with fools.

“Good gods.” In the years since the public speaking ban, Voldemort’s ranks have swelled like a bloating corpse. No wonder Wizarding Britain will live in fear for a decade, at least until Voldemort is temporarily felled by an infant.

Desdemona does not recognize him, as Salazar is using Multa Facies Sucus to wear the visage of the conveniently unavailable William Montague. It did not take much to encourage the Montague patriarch to overindulge, and he’ll sleep heavily until morning. Salazar walks by her in William’s typical shuffle, granting him plenty of time to press a slip of paper into her hand. She sensibly tucks it away instead of attempting to read it while surrounded by the teeming crowds. Desdemona then acts as if she has just spied William Montague for the first time and excuses herself from Abraxus Malfoy’s company, citing the need to escort William to a comfortable chair.

“You need to meet someone else here,” Desdemona says, her tone that of a Pure-blood ready to gush on the power of a new political connection.

“Lead on, then,” Salazar replies, though with William’s gait to mimic, it’s not as swift a trip as he would prefer. It isn’t age that slows William Montague, but magical damage to his knees from an amazingly chaotic midair Quidditch collision during the man’s rudely interrupted professional Quidditch career.

Desdemona finds an isolated part of the estate’s garden, where a man already waits for them, hunched over while seated on a bench, his hands clasped together. “The wards are set?”

The man nods. “Set more, if you like.”

Desdemona is sensible enough to take him at his word. Salazar rests his fingers on his wand and then adds another layer.

She then introduces him to Martinus Flint, a terrified man who thought he’d understood what a war would mean until he was ordered to fight in it. Salazar congratulates himself on reading Martinus Flint so well several years ago, and that the man is so very cautious. It isn’t until Salazar’s disguise wears off that Martinus believes he is _not_ William Montague attempting to ensnare him.

“Paranoia is useful,” Salazar says as Martinus looks upon him in disbelief. “It keeps you alive when little else will. You were on the train platform, weren’t you?”

Martinus nods, looking ill. “I think—I didn’t mean to. But I think—I think I killed Robert Longbottom. Oh, God. I’m not sure, but I wasn’t…” He bends over again and rests his head in his hands.

“Wouldn’t you have been praised for killing an enemy to your Dark Lord’s cause?” Salazar asks, placing his anger aside. It has no place here, not when he faces someone who already regrets his actions to the point of illness. Martinus Flint has lost a drastic amount of weight over the past winter.

“That’s just it. That isn’t supposed to be our cause. We’re to be preserving Pure-bloods, not killing them!” Martinus makes a desperate noise, accompanied by a flailing gesture of distress. “Instead, it was—nobody cared! Robert was a good man, and no one cared that another Pure-blood was dead. We even _attack_ other Pure-bloods! Blood Traitors, they’re labeled, but even Blood Traitors can have Pure-blooded children!”

“If you’re to work for me, there are certain ideas you’ll need to leave behind, especially as they are false,” Salazar says quietly. Martinus stares at him in blank incomprehension. “But we’ll discuss that later.”

“It was different when we were the Knights of Walpurgis,” Martinus mumbles. “It was, wasn’t it?”

“Not if you think on it and realize that the title of Knight was always meant to mislead those with no wish to murder another for foolish causes.”

Martinus stares at Salazar again, but this time, he nods. “Then I will not be misled again.”

In a single month, Salazar has gone from the frustration of standing alone to the reassurance of allies at his back. He isn’t certain that Martinus will ever overcome certain prejudices, but the man is clever and loyal, utterly dedicated to stopping Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Desdemona uses a Pure-blood woman’s demure mannerisms to hide sharp intelligence and canny manipulation.

Salazar, Desdemona, and Martinus are not an army, but they are spies, not soldiers. They need only be quick, sly, and secret. An army is not what this war calls for. Not yet.

* * * *

Isobella Wystera Potter dies on 5th May 1972 at the age of one hundred fifty-eight. Salazar refuses to miss her funeral, though he is not a visible presence.

He warns Henry of his attendance in advance. Henry sends back a note full of blatant gratitude that Salazar will join him to say farewell to the Potter matriarch, the longest-lived Potter in many generations.

After the service’s conclusion, Salazar gets his first good look at Isobella Potter’s memorial stone. “I’d no idea she’d served on the Wizengamot,” he says from beneath the shelter of the Invisibility Cloak. Almost everyone else has left Chiltern Hills. The few remaining Potters will not be surprised if Henry chooses to speak quietly to his great-aunt, entombed properly in the Potter vault next to her two siblings and their spouses.

“When my great-grandfather Nicholas died unexpectedly, he was still a young man. His children were only thirteen, nine, and four years of age. My great-grandmother had no interest in politics, but my Great-Great-Aunt Adelaide and Great-Great-Uncle Nicholas both felt the Potter Wizengamot seat should maintain the established tradition of a direct line of succession. Great-Grandmother Avice had no choice but to sit in the seat until Great-Aunt Isobella came of age. She enjoyed her time on the Wizengamot, but didn’t want it to be her entire life. Grandfather Alastair was given the seat in 1848, after my father and his siblings had reached what Great-Aunt Isobella felt was a good age for their father to be away from home more often. Grandmother Harriet could have taken the seat when he died in 1878, but she was not only mourning my grandfather, but also my uncle James. Great-Uncle Simon had no interest in the Wizengamot, and neither did Cousin Charlus, his son, who was rather occupied with being enamored of his husband.”

Salazar’s eyes flicker over the names. “The Pure-blood curse seems to have struck your family later than most. Your grandparents had three sons.”

“Like the three Weasley boys.” Henry grants the wall of carved stones a faint smile. “Uncle Walter could have held the seat well enough, but he didn’t want it. My father married my mother and accepted the family Wizengamot seat that same year, grieved by the fact that his father and his eldest brother were absent from the wedding ceremony. When Father retired from politics in 1920, I’m the fool who wanted to sit in his place.”

“You still are not a fool for wanting better for Wizarding Britain, Henry.”

Henry sighs. “I remember that notion some days better than others.”

Alberta Peebles Rookwood, who had already tired of Voldemort’s speeches when they were new, joins their spying enclave in October. Her husband, Augustus Rookwood, is fanatically loyal to his Dark Lord. He has all but forgotten his wife and children exist unless they participate in Death Eater doings. Gerald and Geminia, Alberta’s younger son and elder daughter, are just as enthused in Death Eater ideals as their father. Alberta wants to work against Voldemort in the hopes that stopping him will stop _them_ , that her family will return to what it had been before a handsome young Dark Lord stood up in Diagon Alley and spoke his honeyed, treacherous words.

Salazar knows even as she vows to protect the secrecy of their little enclave that Alberta will not last through the entirety of this war as a spy. She isn’t the type to slip and be caught, but he was a good judge of spies long before Europe decided it needed to fight two world wars. Alberta will tire as she realizes that her family will never again be what she longs for. Salazar judges that her participation will last until 1975 before the pain of watching her children become monsters is too much to bear. Either way, he should look to supplementing their ranks now, not later. The only difficulty lies in finding the very few silent dissenters among vast hordes of loud supporters.

He spends more and more time under the cover of Multa Facies Sucus as he finds the Death Eaters among Voldemort’s followers who are the most susceptible to Mind Magic, and to the lure of excess. Salazar avoids those who have resorted to potions, drugs, and poisons to attain their altered states of consciousness, but many Pure-bloods among the Death Eaters regularly overindulge in alcohol.

Taking the hair of one who has become inebriated to unconsciousness, portraying them for an evening, and dropping a memory into their heads afterwards of an evening spent among Death Eaters, is an easy task. Harder is the company Salazar is forced to endure, the sights he witnesses, and the words he utters in his role as a spy. Voldemort is not yet terrifying his followers, but Salazar has seen the first moments of it in the way Voldemort’s voice will turn chill, the twist of certain phrases, and the hints of dark promise. Britain’s Dark Lord has collected his followers, and soon he will begin the task of making certain they know that they will _always_ belong to him.

In January 1973, Salazar has a moment of solitary panic at how close he came to being Marked by Voldemort. The Pure-blood he’d originally chosen to impersonate that night was in the first group of wizards Voldemort selected to receive his new Death Eater’s Mark. If Desdemona and Martinus hadn’t insisted upon being their eyes and ears at that evening’s gathering in Malfoy Manor, Salazar might not have been able to avoid it—and he has to. Salazar has no idea what sort of magic goes into the creation of what will soon come to be known as the Dark Mark. That would be a pathetic way to be caught out, and he doesn’t want to think about what Voldemort might attempt to do to a man who cannot die.

Desdemona avoids receiving the Dark Mark with deft reasoning. She attends the Wizengamot by way of the Dunbar Family Seat, casting votes in her dead husband’s place on behalf of the entire Dunbar family. A lady of her standing who bears such a grim tattoo on her arm would be seen as suspicious at most, and uncouth at the least. Those considered uncouth are not often sought out for social niceties, no matter how wealthy they might be.

Voldemort praises Desdemona’s consideration and wit. He then invites anyone who else who sits upon the Wizengamot to consider similar ways in which they will maintain their secret hold upon that august body. Desdemona informs Salazar with evident disgust that almost none among that first group of chosen Pure-bloods turned down the opportunity to bear Voldemort’s Mark. Geronimus Greengrass, at least, was not foolish enough to accept an obvious sign of loyalty to someone who is waging war against Wizarding Britain.

That only two out of a chosen thirty would turn down the Mark is disquieting news. Voldemort’s Mark is an easy way for their treachery to be revealed, yet these Death Eaters are so certain of themselves, and of victory, that they accept the risk with joy.

Martinus also chooses to receive Voldemort’s Mark. Salazar asks him why.

“It would look odd if I hadn’t, not with all of my foolish male brethren on the Wizengamot choosing to receive it. Geronimus wouldn’t have dared turn down the opportunity if he occupied the Greengrass seat right now instead of his father.” Martinus touches the edge of the skull, avoiding the serpent. For once, Salazar can’t blame anyone for an aversion to snakes; the serpent residing in that tattooed skull feels dangerous. “I know enough Dark Magic to understand what this is. It’s a leash, Saul, but I don’t mind. When Voldemort dies, the leash dies with him. In the meantime, we’ll find out how useful the leash can be.”

They discover quickly that Martinus was wise to accept the Mark. As more of Voldemort’s followers accept the Dark Mark, it becomes the primary means of informing certain Death Eaters where it is they’re meant to meet, and sometimes what they’re meant to do once they arrive. Without the Dark Mark, they would once again be on the outside, and this time there would be no easy way back in.

For one of the few times in his life, Salazar judged another’s talents and tenacity wrong. Alberta Rookwood leaves them with the turning of the year.

“I just—I can’t,” Alberta whispers. “I watched my daughter torture someone for the Christmas holiday and laugh about it, Saul. Laugh. She _laughed_ in a way I haven’t heard since she was a little girl. She never once tortured an insect as a child, even out of curiosity, and now she’ll torture another man and laugh as he screams. I can’t. I’m so sorry.”

Martinus is the first to embrace Alberta. “There is no need to apologize. My wife and I do not yet have children, but I know I wouldn’t be able to bear it, either. Get off this island, Alberta.”

“Feel no guilt, for I blame you not at all,” Salazar says to Alberta. “Martinus is right. Leave this island and its war. Don’t look back.”

Desdemona’s voice drops into the silence that hangs over them after Alberta is gone. “It’s just the three of us once more, then.”

“Not for long,” Salazar says. “It will be four again soon.”

Martinus glances at him. “When?”

Salazar frowns before shaking his head. “I don’t know. Divination is not necessarily precise. I just know it will be four, and soon.”

“As long as ‘soon’ is not five years from now,” Desdemona says. “With Voldemort’s gatherings now happening at the same time in different locations, we’ll be exhausted in short order.”

* * * *

In the last week of June, Desdemona sends him a Patronus that chills Salazar’s blood, and for more than one reason. Her elegant greyhound takes several precise steps forward before speaking in her voice: “Richard Jugson has been asked to prove himself before the Dark Lord will Mark him as one of us. He’s chosen to attack the Bones Manor. Revenge for his brother marrying in with Blood Traitors, he said. They are expecting your participation, Augustine.”

It takes genuine effort for Salazar to cheer with the others, to wait until the discussions begun as to how Richard Jugson plans to succeed. Then he toddles off in his guise as overly inebriated Augustine Travers, stating that he’s going to have another drink before he joins the affair in Oxfordshire. Few pay attention to him after Desdemona’s Patronus fades, but when they do, it’s to glare at him with envy for being called upon to participate in a raid against Blood Traitors.

Salazar Floos back to the Travers home the moment he reaches the closest fireplace. His hand is shaking as he lowers his wand to a snoring man’s temple, granting Augustine Travers the memory of spending the evening at the Bulstrode home. The crafted memory blurs around the time of the Patronus’s arrival; Salazar was portraying Augustine Travers as so drunk that no one will question it if Travers can’t remember the raid itself. What matters is that he will believe he participated.

He uses magic to speed things along, dressing in a Death Eater’s now-feared black cloak and mask before Apparating to Oxfordshire. There is no means by which bloody Richard Jugson should be able to breach the wards on the ancient Bones Estate. Their manor house still resembles a castle more than it does a residence. Jugson is cruel, an excellent duelist, and bad at politics, but the idiot isn’t powerful. Salazar will be attending a raid meant to instill fear, nothing more—

For a moment, Salazar can only stare in shock. The manor house is burning. The ancient wards are destroyed, nothing remaining of them but for jangled bits of broken magic. Even the earth beneath his feet is displeased, disturbed as it is by…

“Gods,” Salazar gasps, and then gags when the stench hits. Someone needed power to break through ancient wards, and they gained it by murdering another. There isn’t enough left of the body to determine a physical gender, let alone an identity.

That is Blood Magic, but it’s too crude to be done by a trained wizard. This smacks of being copied from a book, but murder fueling belief is often all that such a spell requires. Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck!_

Where the absolute sodding bloody hell are the other Death Eaters? Have they already killed everyone and returned home to celebrate?

The Apparition is instinctive. It’s only after Salazar arrives that he realizes he was responding to a woman’s scream. Three Death Eaters are standing around a body—no, a living victim.

Salazar Confounds the Death Eaters with his next breath, glancing down at the woman lying on the grass. She is struggling to breathe, her injuries severe and horrendous in their nature. Salazar thinks it must be pure stubbornness that is keeping her alive, but if he doesn’t act quickly, she won’t survive to spoil part of Richard Jugson’s terrible success.

He is going to fucking well kill Richard Jugson at the first granted opportunity.

“I’m sorry,” he says to her, noting that her eyes are a true and perfect hazel blend of the human eye’s palette of color. Then he grabs a hair from her head that hasn’t been touched by blood and yanks it free. He casts Tempero on the closest Death Eater and orders them to remove their mask, revealing the slackened face of George Chambers. The woman on the ground gasps, the shock of recognition.

Bloody hell. The Chambers are meant to be allies to the Bones family, not their enemies!

“It appears as if your son will be inheriting the family Wizengamot seat sooner rather than later.” Salazar pulls a phial of Multa Facies Sucus from his pocket and pops the cork free in order to drop the woman’s hair into the potion. “Bottoms up, George Chambers.”

Chambers obediently drinks the potion and becomes a mimicry of the woman lying on the ground. Without the wounds, she is recognizable as Teresa Bones Jugson, the younger sister of Amelia and Edgar Bones. A birth announcement in the paper proclaimed that Teresa and Ivan Jugson had recently been blessed with twins.

Edgar Bones is a member of Albus Dumbledore’s very quiet, unofficial group. None have confirmed it, but rumor speaks of the members calling themselves the Order of the Phoenix.

Salazar glances back at the burning manor. No; he is all but certain that Edgar Bones was now a _former_ member of Dumbledore’s quiet act of rebellion against a Wizengamot stacked with Death Eaters. He doubts that Teresa has a spouse any longer, nor her children.

Rage had never left Salazar senseless; it grants him a clarity of thought and purpose. It’s the fire he needs to lift his wand and do what must be done to rescue Teresa Bones Jugson. After his clothes are Transfigured to be a match for the dying woman at his feet, Chambers dies a swift, merciless death. The Death Eaters accompanying him are sent on their merry way, convinced by Tempero, their confused state, and Mind Magic that they lost Chambers to the burning of the Bones Estate, but still had the “joy” of torturing the last survivor to death.

Only then does Salazar bend down and gently pick up their intended victim. “I’m not who you think me to be, and I am so very sorry for what has happened this evening,” he murmurs. Teresa Jugson only stares at him, not a hint of belief in her gaze. If he were in her place, he wouldn’t be inclined to believe those words, either.

Salazar takes a breath that is rich with smoke and blood before he Apparates.

Desdemona hasn’t been able to yet escape Malfoy Manor, but Martinus is waiting in the Willow House when Salazar returns with a dying woman in his arms. “Good God, what the hell happened?” Martinus asks, reaching beneath the kitchen sink to retrieve the store of potions and medical supplies. There are several such stashes in his house, as Salazar is well aware of how easy it is to be too injured to retrieve supplies stored out of reach.

“Richard Jugson happened, and I hope he died in that fucking fire,” Salazar spits, lowering Teresa Jugson to the sofa before he strips off cloak and mask. The Multa Facies Sucus has long since worn off, thank the gods. His new patient still has her wits; her eyes widen at the sight of his face. “I did tell you I was not who you suspected me to be.” With that, he lifts his wand. “I’m not a master of healing, but I’ve certainly done enough of it over the years. Martinus, I need an assistant, and you’re the only other being in this house with hands.”

“Of course.” Martinus comes closer and looks at Teresa Jugson, who flinches back. “I’m not with _them_ , Teresa _._ They merely believe I am.”

Salazar is heartened when Teresa Jugson glares at Martinus. She needs someone with Helga’s talents, but she has spite and spirit. Maybe his skills will be enough for her survive this night.


	15. Residing Underground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At this rate, he’ll be a screaming wreck by 1981.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, it turned out to be a bonus chapter. Here's a "it's Friday somewhere already" regular, beta-flail-read by @norcumii <3

No one is punished for the loss of George Chambers. Bradley Chambers is just as much a Death Eater as his father had been, and takes the Chambers seat with the intent of furthering his Dark Lord’s agenda. Richard Jugson is praised by many for his successful slaughter of Blood Traitors, and for now bearing Voldemort’s Mark. Nothing is mentioned of who it is that knows how to break through ancient wards like they’re made of glass. As long as that person exists, they endanger every single magical family in Britain.

Teresa Bones Jugson recovers slowly. Even after she begins speaking again, she doesn’t thank Salazar for rescuing her. Salazar isn’t offended. She is not yet a nineteen-year-old woman, newly widowed by violence, her family decimated, her twin infant girls killed by gods-cursed Death Eaters. Her only surviving family members are her youngest and oldest siblings. Lysander Bones is a student of Hogwarts who hadn’t been due to come home until the day after the slaughter. Amelia Bones is pursuing some sort of career within the M.L.E. and currently lives in London.

Desdemona visits the Willow House more often than Martinus. They all three recognize that while there isn’t yet trust, a woman’s presence is more comforting to Teresa Jugson than a man. What concerns Salazar the most is that for the first few weeks of July, it seems as if his unexpected houseguest might actually succeed in willing herself to die.

Damn Richard Jugson, anyway. He brags of what he did to his own brother, and to the whole of the extended Bones family, to anyone who will listen. Gamelinus Rowle boasts of what he believes he and William Wilkes did to Teresa Jugson, as if it’s some great victory to torture someone to death when they are already dying. Lucretia Prewett is _furious_ and has already vowed revenge. When she succeeds, Salazar will not mourn those losses.

Desdemona sits with Teresa Jugson one evening while Salazar is brewing more potions, trying to finish healing what can still be mended in a body that was so badly broken. While he is occupied, Desdemona speaks with Teresa Jugson of the only thing that might motivate a grieving young woman who believes she has lost everything: revenge.

“If I thought that to be the best choice, I would have suggested it already,” Salazar says to Desdemona, but not in a tone that speaks of disapproval. He sees the sparks of a renewed interest in life in Teresa’s eyes and decides that perhaps she needs one more bit of motivation to trust that “Saul,” Desdemona Bulstrode Dunbar, and Martinus Flint’s intentions are true.

Monty Potter arrives by knocking on the front door on 24th July. “Hi, Sal.”

“You look tired,” is Salazar’s response, waving him inside. Monty has shadows beneath his eyes and a wan cast to his features that tells Salazar he needs to be sending quite a bit more Restorative Potions to the Potter manor.

Monty’s smile is a brief thing, as tired as he is. “It’s getting worse out there. Rufus and Lucretia are doing what they can through the M.L.E., and they have their supporters who aren’t stupid, but there is only so much they can do when the Ministry is staffed by stupid fucking bastards.”

“True enough.” Salazar guides Monty over to the sofa, whereupon Monty sucks in a startled breath. “One survivor only, Monty. Just the one.”

“Fleamont Potter?” Teresa Jugson asks in disbelief. “Why would you be here?”

“Sal invited me,” Monty replies. “I’ve known him since I was fourteen, Madam Jugson. And please, call me Monty.”

Teresa Jugson bites her lip. “Bones,” she whispers. “It’s just…it’s just Bones again.”

Monty drops to one knee beside the sofa, offering his hand to Teresa Bones. “I am so very sorry. If it helps at all, Lucretia says that your sister Amelia may well take over the whole of the M.L.E. just to bring everyone involved to justice.”

“I’d rather see them all dead,” Teresa Bones mutters darkly. “Why are you here?”

“As I said, I was invited,” Monty says. “I’m also aware of what Sal is up to, with his mad spying on Voldemort. I don’t know who else is involved, but if Sal trusts them, then it’s for good reason.”

Teresa Bones’s eyes narrow as she gives Salazar a suspicious glance. “Sal? That isn’t the name I was told.”

Monty shrugs. “Sal, Saul—there isn’t much difference, is there? Besides, Saul Luiz is supposed to be dead.”

“I’m very bad at staying that way, Teresa Bones,” Salazar says when she glances at him again.

“Are you going to be helping my dad’s best friend with his mad scheme, or…?” Monty pulls a face. “Or maybe you shouldn’t tell me that. I’m on the front lines facing off against these idiots, and I still don’t know which of us has the harder job.”

“I won’t exactly be capable of fighting directly, will I?” Teresa Bones asks in a bitter voice.

Monty raises an eyebrow. “One of my defence teachers would definitely be asking this, so I will, too. What’s stopping you from lifting your wand right now?”

“Not having one!” Teresa Bones snaps back.

“Okay, that’s a good reason.”

“One I can fix,” Salazar adds. “If you wish.”

Teresa Bones glares at Monty. “Are you here to trick me into trusting him?”

“If I hadn’t met your sister, I’d be offended by that,” Monty says dryly, and Teresa Bones flushes violet-edged pink. “That’s entirely up to you. Everyone already thinks you’re dead, Teresa. If Sal really wanted you to be dead in truth, I imagine we wouldn’t be conversing right now. It’s for your own bloody safety until you’re capable of pointing a wand at some prick of a Death Eater and handing them their arse. After that? I can give you one way of fighting back. Sal can give you another. As far as I’m aware, you could probably do both, if you wanted.”

Teresa Bones bites her lip. “You’re with the group Edgar was with. The one Albus Dumbledore started. Aren’t you?”

“I am, but not because of Albus Dumbledore,” Monty answers. “I’m not actually very fond of him, but my son is, so I’d rather be where I know James will want to go if this war is still being fought when he graduates from Hogwarts.”

“Or until James tries to leave school early just to have a go at being a target,” Salazar says.

Monty rolls his eyes. “Over my dead body, he will. I already warned James that if he didn’t graduate Hogwarts properly, I’d disown him, his mother would back me up on it, and his grandparents would make certain it happened. James asked me right then, ‘Since when are we like the Black family?’ and I’m fairly certain that Aunt Dorea hasn’t stopped laughing since.”

Salazar grins. “That one needs to be paying a bit more attention to the family tree.”

“He truly does, especially as he’s getting to that age of looking around to see who’s attractive and who isn’t. So far, though, the most James concerns himself with regarding the family history is our bloody Invisibility Cloak. I sent James to school with it—for protection, I told him, just in case. I don’t think Minerva is _ever_ going to forgive me for that, especially as Dumbledore is too fond of waving off the consequences every time James uses the family Cloak for mischief.”

Salazar is not surprised that Albus Dumbledore would do such a thing. “What sort of mischief?”

Monty sighs. “From what I can gather, James and his friends are at war with Slytherin House.”

“Good gods, _why?_ ”

“The divisions. The rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin, in particular. It’s so much worse than that it ever was, Sal.”

“It is.” Teresa Bones flinches a bit when they both look at her, but doesn’t shrink back. “The rivalries, I mean. Hufflepuff is largely left out of it, but it isn’t as if we’re unobservant. It doesn’t help that Slytherin House hosts the most families who support _him._ I—I met James, though. He was a second-year when I graduated. James acted a proper gentleman to me, but I don’t think it’s a habit he keeps to all the time.”

“No thirteen-year-old does,” Monty says, smiling. “I went through my own phase of being a bit of a prick, but you grow out of it.”

“I was a _horrid_ fourteen-year-old,” Teresa Bones agrees, her hazel eyes brightening a bit with true humor as she smiles back at Monty. “But I don’t like Dumbledore, either. If you’re promising me that Saul is truly against Voldemort—”

“I’ll pledge it on my magic, if you like,” Monty offers, but she only seems horrified by that.

“That really isn’t necessary! I—maybe later, I might fight with you on my own two feet,” Teresa Bones says. “For now, I’ve a great deal of healing to do.” Her eyes narrow again. “I said I didn’t like Dumbledore, and you didn’t judge my opinion. Why?”

Monty sits back on his haunches. “I told Sal when I was much younger that Dumbledore’s way of doing things reminded me of Patrician Lestrange. My opinion hasn’t changed, but I’d now add the caveat that Dumbledore is good at putting a fine polish on what he says and does.

“Don’t mistake my words; I believe Dumbledore is right to form this quiet little resistance group of ours, especially given the Ministry’s policies and their bloody insistence that there is no war. Their lack of addressing what happened to your entire family, and what’s been happening to so many other families, is granting Voldemort yet another advantage when his followers already outnumber us _and_ the whole of the bloody M.L.E. combined. Some of the Aurors are siding with our group as the M.L.E. is hindered, including Rufus Scrimgeour’s ambitious protégé, Alastor Moody. Recognizing the need to fight back against Voldemort isn’t a grand gesture of goodwill, Teresa. It’s bloody common sense.”

That evening is the easiest time Salazar has yet had of convincing Teresa Bones to accept the potions that are helping her body to mend. He thanks Monty for being the provider of such ease.

“Right, yeah.” Monty gives the sleeping woman on the couch a sympathetic stare. “You’re welcome.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m worried about Dad,” Monty says bluntly. “He’s not fighting in the war, but given the chaos in the Wizengamot, fighting might be easier on him. It’s getting thick in there, Sal, and it’s not helping that Herbert Burke died last week.”

“I know. It was in the _Prophet._ ” Salazar had sworn viciously over the man’s death notice. His language worsened when he saw that Herbert’s obituary was immediately followed by the announcement of Basil Burke taking on the family Wizengamot seat instead of his “lesser skilled” cousin. Salazar would very much like for Phineas Burke to stand before the Wizengamot and sue Basil for defamation of character, but Phineas is unfortunately rather used to the derision of his cousins, and pays it no heed.

Salazar still visits the Potters when he can, and knows his opportunities to do so will become less as the war’s pace increases. They are not always pleasant visits, though Salazar does his best to improve a poor mood when he finds one lurking about. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to improve this one. “What of Euphemia’s lacking presence this evening, Monty? I did invite you both.”

“Euphemia worries that her Occlumency wouldn’t stand up to another’s Legilimency if anyone…” Monty grimaces. “I don’t have to lay it out for you. You know exactly what I mean, and as neither of us knew what you intended tonight…”

“I understand. What of yourself, though?” Salazar asks. “I know your Mind Magic would withstand anything you wished for it to endure.”

“It isn’t about that. Meeting Teresa is one thing, as—” Monty glances at Teresa again, reassuring himself that she still sleeps. “There is little chance I’ll see her on a battlefield, Sal. The others, though. I worry that I would recognize someone and hesitate in a way that another would notice. You were right to say that I’m no spy. I’m not even a good politician, not like Dad.”

“You’re better than you think,” Salazar refutes. “Besides, being a good politician right now is a simple matter of not wanting to be ruled by Voldemort.”

“His followers still outnumber us, though,” Monty says. “Basil Burke is just one more voice lent to a bigoted majority of idiotic Pure-bloods who’ve all but made Voldemort their king.”

“They won’t win, Monty.”

“They don’t exactly lose, either,” Monty retorts. “Do they?”

Salazar hesitates before deciding he isn’t mentioning something that is not already known. “Given the fact that I cannot die until Voldemort is dead, you at least hold the assurance that I will not stop trying to unseat him until that event comes to pass.”

Monty gives him another dry look. “What if you decide you’d rather be immortal?”

Salazar shudders. “Don’t say such things. I’d rather not have that occur in truth, Monty Potter! I’m one thousand three years of age as it is!”

Monty laughs at him, which does away with some of his foul mood. “You have a fair number of them to go, too. In the meantime, I’m just forty-four years old, and already I’m bloody wandering about with spectacles all the time!”

Salazar hears his brother’s portrait give a not-so-discreet cough. “I might be able to fix that now, if you want. You’d still need the subterfuge of glass lenses, but…”

Monty turns to face Nizar’s now-occupied portrait frame. “What do you mean? Oculus doesn’t work on Potters. At least, it certainly hasn’t in quite a long time.”

“That’s because Oculus is bullshit,” Nizar replies. “It took so much digging to remember the recipe for Sana Visio. There was nearly one thousand years in the way, and…” Nizar breaks off. “Anyway, take notes. I’ve a potion for you that’ll make enough for you, Euphemia, Henry, and Elizabetha.”

“You could call us by our familial titles, you know,” Monty says, but he’s already pulling a bound journal and a quill from his robe pockets.

“I could, yeah, but it’s bloody sodding _weird!_ ”

Salazar writes down his own copy of the potion—bloody hell, he’s been getting the turmeric wrong, as it isn’t supposed to be there in the first place!—and sends a distracted Master of Alchemy on his way. Then he checks on Teresa Bones, who is still deeply asleep, before turning back to Nizar’s portrait. “You were going to say something else. What is it?”

“You know I’d been digging about for the Taming Potion’s formula, yeah?”

“Of course. If anyone had reason to memorize it beyond all doubt, that would be you, little brother.” Salazar had it memorized once, long ago, but hadn’t lived with the same sort of necessity. He wrote it down, but the journal the recipe was written in was lost to a flood, just like so many other early creations he cannot now recall. More fool he for not asking to _remember_ his life in vivid detail when he asked not to die, but he’s long since made peace with that bit of stupidity. “Why?”

“I can’t find it. It’s not here, and it’s not because Myself didn’t put it here.” Nizar glances aside once, one of his tells for when he doesn’t wish to speak of something. “That isn’t the only thing missing. I think the portrait’s magic is starting to break down.”

Salazar nearly drops onto his arse. He feels sick and ice-cold, like he’s wandered upon one of those fucking Dementors by accident. “It can’t.”

“It certainly can. This painting was designed to live in Hogwarts, Sal, and it’s not as if I’ve dwelled there recently,” Nizar says. “And…I was trying to talk to Isis today.”

 _Oh, gods._ “What went wrong?”

“She couldn’t understand me.” Nizar looks nervous. “It was all in Parseltongue. I couldn’t even manage Arabic for her.”

“Fuck me sideways,” Salazar whispers. “If you can’t speak to anyone but myself—”

“What good am I?” Nizar grants him a grim smile. “Yeah.”

Salazar shoves his hands into his hair and considers screaming, but Teresa Bones would not much appreciate that sort of waking. “We’ll find another solution.”

“Of course we will. Hogwarts, 1995, after Hallowe’en.”

Salazar nods, but he isn’t that patient. He’ll find a way to solve this problem, one that won’t leave Nizar again dependent on a permanent Parseltongue translator.

* * * *

Teresa Bones finally begins to improve, sitting up to take meals that she eats without assistance. One of her very first acts the day after Monty’s visit is to tell Salazar off for being formal, that she has a name, and he’d better use it before she masters wandless magic just to beat him to death with a sofa cushion.

Salazar grins. “Teresa it is, then. A beating by sofa cushion would be a long and annoying way to expire.”

“What do I call you, then? Sal, or Saul?” Teresa asks.

“Saul in front of Martinus or Desdemona, please. Martinus only knows me by my not-so-deceased identity. Desdemona knows both, but that is because she’s meant to become my replacement if something happens to me.”

Teresa frowns. “There are only three of you right now, aren’t there?”

“There were four, but she was watching her grown children do terrible things to others, and the pain of it…it was too much. She’s left the island entirely now,” Salazar tells her. “Wait a moment, please.”

When he returns, he drops his armload of folders and files onto the table placed in front of Teresa’s favored spot on the sofa. “What is this?” she asks, opening the top file to the first page. Fortunately for her, they were not only properly Preserved, but dust does not dare linger for long in the Willow House.

“These are from my time working as a spy for both the British government and Wizarding Britain.” Salazar is not supposed to have them any longer, but MI6 hadn’t been very specific in the manner in which it had asked for the return of its property. “I reported on World War II and the European Wizarding War in fairly equal measure. Reading these files will help you to decide what it is you wish to do, how you wish to fight, or if you choose not to fight at all.”

“I’m glad Teresa has recalled that there is more to life than loss,” Desdemona says quietly, watching as Teresa plows through years of documents that cover everything from casual gossip to reporting on the atrocities of war, no matter whose side committed the act. “The Ancient House of Bones is decimated, but it is not broken.”

“She lost two beloved children before she could truly know them, Desdemona. I would wish that pain on no one, and she will carry it for the rest of her life.”

Desdemona gives him a brief, searching look. “Sometimes I am too pragmatic. Thank you for reminding me otherwise.”

Each day, Teresa waits and watches as Salazar casts the spells that are meant to reinforce the bones in her legs, pelvis, and lower back. The work must pain her, but she never complains of it. “Do you think I’ll ever be able to walk again?”

Salazar lowers his wand. “As you did before? That is unlikely, Teresa. I suspect you may be able to walk again with assistance, but it will not be easy.”

“I think I’ve come to believe that nothing is easy except childhood,” Teresa murmurs. “Even after I had my children, I still felt like a child. I don’t any longer.”

Salazar swallows. Another’s grief for lost children often stirs his own. “I am so very sorry.”

Teresa shakes her head. “You saved me. You would have saved the others if you could. To me, that doesn’t warrant an apology.”

“Then I will rephrase my words, and say that I grieve with you for your loss.”

Teresa looks up at him from her claimed corner of his sofa. She chooses to sleep there, as well. Salazar suspects she doesn’t want to feel isolated, and won’t begrudge her the use of his furniture. “You do, don’t you?” She tilts her head, not expecting an answer. “They really do believe me to be dead, don’t they?”

“An unfortunate consequence of needing to convince your murderers that you were exactly that,” Salazar replies. “You can go to your siblings and change that belief, if you wish.”

“Could I?” Again, Teresa doesn’t seem to be expecting an answer. “I’m not so certain I could. My husband was murdered by his own brother, Saul.”

“If you don’t claim him for yourself, I’ll kill Richard Jugson for you, if you like.”

Teresa’s smile is faint and humorous, but it has a sharp edge that Salazar doubts was present before her family was murdered before her eyes. “I’m undecided on that. You have the accoutrements of a Death Eater. When Monty Potter said that you spy, he means that you aren’t doing so from a distance. You’re right there among them.”

“I am. The company of Death Eaters leaves much to be desired.”

“Then I hope you’re all right with having another spy in your household, because I am in no mood to laze about,” Teresa declares. “Voldemort and his Death Eaters must be stopped.”

“Revenge worked nicely, didn’t it?” Desdemona asks, smug and pleased when she next returns to find that their enclave of spies numbers four again.

“It often does,” Salazar admits, though he prefers to work with spies who are not motivated solely by the need for vengeance. “We needed someone like her. She’s an excellent coordinator when it comes to the information a spy gathers. She took apart my old briefings with ease, and she isn’t even trained for that sort of translation.”

“Excellent.” Desdemona glances at Salazar. “She is also another point of contact. If we gain more members, we should not all know of each other.”

“No, we shouldn’t.” Salazar rubs the bridge of his nose. How quickly one forgets that secrets within secrets are a swift recipe for a massive bloody headache. “Thank you, Desdemona.”

“You’re welcome, Salazar.”

Salazar glances at her from the corner of his eye. “Do be silent.”

Desdemona’s smile widens. “Only when I must.”

* * * *

The next time Salazar goes into Muggle London, he returns home feeling quite baffled. “What the bloody hell is SI?”

It’s fortunate that Teresa has already been introduced to Nizar’s portrait, and to Isis, and doesn’t react when Nizar suddenly answers him. “That would be the metric system, Sal.”

Salazar frowns. He remembers something about mandatory government conversions to a new measuring system, but Voldemort’s war did an excellent job of obliterating his concern for such mundane things when he now has to concern himself with keeping others alive. At least the decimal system being introduced to Muggle money had seemed logical. “Metric system.”

“ _It’s a base-ten system of measurement,_ ” Nizar hisses in Parseltongue, and then looks annoyed. “ _Fuck!_ ”

“Oh. I remember that now. You asked how anyone could ever get anything done,” Salazar murmurs. He has to find that alternate method of communication, and he must do it soon. The incidents of unexpected Parseltongue are quickly getting more frequent. Teresa has become accustomed to sudden bouts of hissing, though at first she had so many questions regarding the nature of Parseltongue that Salazar wasn’t certain he would ever be able to answer them all. She gets on well with both portraits, though she sometimes seems bemused by the fact that Nizar and Isis are communicative, inquisitive busybodies made of paint and magic.

“Our portraits at home—” She pauses for a moment and then continues. “Our portraits at home weren’t nearly so personable.”

Salazar politely ignores the slip, which Teresa prefers. “I’ve often found that magical portraits are far more lively when people regularly interact with them.”

“That does seem to be the case here.” Teresa watches as Salazar removes a new pressing from its cover and places the album on his open turntable. “What is that—more accurately, who is that? And why not use a gramophone? I know that you have one.”

“Muggle records aren’t made from shellac. An unaltered gramophone would destroy the album, and I don’t wish to alter my gramophone, as I still have older records. Sometimes the charm necessary to make a gramophone capable of playing both types interferes with the sound quality of the shellac pressings.” Salazar glances at her. “If you can’t yet tell the difference between shellac and vinyl, _please_ do not use the gramophone.”

Teresa smiles. “Duly noted.” She waits until the first track, one of the odder preludes Salazar has ever heard, has concluded, and the first real song begins. “I did ask who this is. I’m not certain I like it, though it’s certainly mellow.”

“Pink Floyd. They had a new release this past March, and I didn’t even know of it.”

“Oh, yes. You tend to wear their teed-shirts often.”

“T-shirts,” Salazar corrects, amused. “I do like them.” So far, he likes this, too. “Breathe” is soothing to nerves that have been jangling since Alberta Peebles Rookwood divorced her husband and wisely fled Britain. “I didn’t even realize I was picking up a Pink Floyd album at first. It was the representation of the visible light spectrum on the album’s cover that caught my eye.”

“It is pretty,” Teresa admits. Then the third track starts with the sudden clanging of alarm clocks and bells, sending Salazar out of his own chair as he tries to find a threat that doesn’t exist.

“Good fucking gods, I need that last nerve,” Salazar gasps from the floor. “What the hell is that meant to be?”

“Funny,” Teresa says. She has her wand in her hand, but at least she didn’t fling herself to the ground.

Salazar attempts to glare at her before they both burst into half-hysterical, relieved laughter. He resolves that he’s going to charm that track so that the needle skips over those damned ringing bells, at least until the war is done.

In August, John Morgan’s widow dies. Ella Hitchens Morgan never did learn not to drone on and on about her perfect grandchild when others were lacking, but she was a good woman who never once stopped being proud of her husband for his service during the European wars. Salazar doesn’t have the opportunity to attend the service, but Elizabetha informs him it was pleasant, insofar as funerals can be found to be such.

He makes time for a brief visit to Potter Manor afterwards, because by the gods, Voldemort is not going to take this connection away from him before death makes it a certainty. Henry is attending an emergency session of the Wizengamot for reasons not yet known; Elizabetha is with other Pure-blood spouses, participating in a group which call themselves Spouses Against Idiot Ministers. (Salazar approves of the pun, even if it is unintended.) Monty is also away, in the midst of brokering the deal that will sell Sleekeazy’s Potions & Balms.

“Did Monty tire of hair care production already?”

“You and I both know that Monty had no intention to form a company. It was one of those boulder-rolling-downhill situations,” Euphemia says. “He’ll be glad to be rid of it.”

“At least he won’t find selling the company to be a Sisyphean task.”

“Stop it,” Euphemia orders, but she can’t hold onto her stern expression. “How have you been, Sal?”

“A ringing alarm clock on a bloody vinyl record had me flinging myself to the ground. Not even the European wars managed to do that to me,” Salazar confesses. Granted, this war might simply have decided to draw forth every fear about his time in Europe that he forgot to indulge in. He was a bit too busy dealing with numerous nuclear explosions.

Euphemia’s smile fades. “Was the Bones Massacre—was it really bad?”

Salazar will spare her the details, but he will not lie. “It was, yes. I didn’t see the slaughter when it began, but I found the means by which they gained entry. Murder fueled a ward-breaking spell, and they didn’t clean up after themselves. It was not a kind way for someone to die, and I’ve yet to hear a word from the Ministry that they’re investigating that unknown person’s death.” He nearly mentions Teresa before remembering not to do so. Euphemia would be glad to hear of her survival, but then would worry endlessly that she might endanger Teresa’s continued existence. Euphemia is an amazing woman and a brilliant healer, but he’ll not force her into a warrior’s role that she does not want.

“As far as I’m aware, that leaves the M.L.E. with only two bodies that didn’t burn in the fire,” Salazar says. “You’d think the Ministry would be a bit more concerned with identifying the other victim.”

Euphemia shakes her head and hugs him. “I’ll mention it to Harry. God knows I couldn’t help with that, though my rusty healing skills are being challenged when it comes to helping those who survive these attacks.”

“Don’t overdo it.” Salazar tries not to slump into her embrace. He needed the contact, this demonstration of caring, and it’s only sodding 1973. At this rate, he’ll be a screaming wreck by 1981. “Your health is just as important.”

“Now you sound like Monty,” Euphemia says wryly. “It’s all right. I’ve plenty of students who want to learn the basics, and others who want to learn more complex things. Soon enough I’ll have so many assistants that I’ll never be in danger of tiring myself out again.”

After Ella Morgan’s funeral, Teresa begins dreaming of the attack on the Bones Estate, and of the fire. Salazar is surprised the nightmares didn’t begin sooner, and rather glad of it. Teresa is physically recovered enough that a portrait is a suitable guardian for her rest, as someone should be nearby while she sleeps, but Voldemort always becomes more active during the school months. Salazar often wonders if it’s some odd habit carried over from childhood, a subconscious recognition that ten months out of the year, Tom Marvolo Riddle was away from the orphanage he hated. He might even, if Albus Dumbledore is to be believed, have considered himself to be dwelling in a place that he loved.

Regardless of the cause, it means that he, Martinus, and Desdemona are constantly on the move. They barely ever see their own homes that winter as they send messages and Patroni off to Teresa, who is now in charge of collating the information they gather and sending off the summarized, relevant parts to those in the best position to act. Salazar is grateful that it is most often Lucretia or Rufus who receives their intelligence, as Dumbledore’s lot most often do not bloody well listen _._

After several Death Eater-provided horrors, the Provisional IRA chooses the worst possible time to be active again. They decide to attack Britain in earnest, restarting the cycle of retaliation. It also gives the Ministry someone to blame who is not Voldemort.

Minister Jenkins now looks as if she was unjustly treated as a pariah, and is upheld for her wise vision as to what was _truly_ occurring in Britain. Henry looks both worn and frustrated, saying it’s now more difficult than ever to convince the Ministry that Voldemort’s Death Eaters pose a true threat. The Wizengamot won’t change their minds even after the IRA lays off again for the winter, but the attacks on Wizarding Britain still continue.

Teresa is left growling after hearing the Wizarding Wireless report on the Minister’s latest speech, in which Jenkins states that the Bones Estate will be re-investigated in light of New Muggle Activity to ascertain the “truth” about the Bones family’s unfortunate losses. “Can I kill her?” she asks, snapping off the Wizarding Wireless with a literal snap of her fingers.

Salazar silently repairs the cracked knob on the front of the wireless. Teresa is developing a strong talent for wandless magic, but there is still quite a bit of kick on the back end. “At this rate, the IRA might get to Eugenia Jenkins before we do.”

Then comes a months-long spate in which Salazar feels as if it’s been years since he was able to stick his head up above the whitewater chaos of an unfolding war. By April 1974, Teresa says it feels as if she’s taken up residence underground after not going outside for so long. She means it in jest, yet somehow, the term lingers. Then Desdemona introduces Martinus to the real Underground beneath London, and there is no stopping it. When they finally gain their next member, over a year after Teresa’s rescue, he isn’t welcomed into a mere spy’s enclave, but an Underground.

Blythe Allen Petersen is a seventeen-year-old Ravenclaw, and just as intelligent as Rowena would have preferred. He seems the nondescript sort, with brown hair that only has hints of yellow undertones and skin the color of teak with ruddy highlights. It’s his brown eyes, highlighted by bronze, gold, and copper, that set him apart, his fierce intellect causing them to appear as if they’re lit from within. Blythe is due to put in his final year at Hogwarts in a month’s time, which will grant them a pair of eyes inside the school. That will gain the Underground a better idea of who will turn up next July as newly minted Death Eaters. Even a year’s warning is better than none at all.

Blythe admits that he foolishly chose to be a Death Eater in July without much prompting or manipulation from others, but it was revenge that motivated him, not Blood Purity nonsense. Of course, it was not until after he acquired Voldemort’s Mark that he realized gaining revenge would incite the deadly wrath of three other Death Eaters.

“You’ve a powerful Pure-blood for a father. When confronted by your mother and his illegitimate child, he placed you both under a geas so you could tell no one of your parentage, an instruction that will not end until his death.”

“That’s about the size of it, yeah,” Blythe says. “Mum wasn’t even angry about him being married, not until he was daft enough to smack us both with magic that meant we couldn’t tell anyone about what he’d done. Marriage wasn’t the issue. It’s that my father didn’t bloody well _tell_ Mum that he was married before getting her pregnant that made her so angry, but then the geas—he had no fucking right to do that to us.”

Salazar wonders if slapping himself in the face would help. “Is there _any_ Pure-blooded male in Wizarding Britain who is willing to take responsibility for their accidental offspring?”

“It doesn’t seem like it, does it?” Desdemona smiles. “My younger brother Alfridus is guilty of the same,” she explains for Blythe’s benefit. “I have an illegitimate niece named Esmerelda Rothschild. Her mother isn’t one for parental instincts, so Esmerelda spends a great deal of her time with her uncle Onyx and his wife, Elizabeth. Heliotrope refused to wed Alfridus when she became pregnant, which is why he married Majora Runcorn. It turns out that not only did Heliotrope Rothschild hold little interest in parenting, she had absolutely no interest at all in marriage.”

Blythe raises both eyebrows. “That would explain the muttered-about Rothschild family rift, I suppose. I was curious as to why Onyx Rothschild wasn’t among the other Death Eaters.”

“They don’t play nicely together,” Salazar drawls. “Aside from Esmerelda’s safety, his refusal to obey his father may mean that there will be a magical Rothschild family left on this isle when the war is done.”

“I wish I’d been that sensible.” The young man sighs, sounding as if he’s been running himself into the ground in the short time he’s dealt with Voldemort. “To be honest, I’m still not certain why Voldemort accepted me into the ranks in the first place, let alone grant me a Mark I’m already aware that not everyone is given. I’m a Half-blood. I don’t have a Wizarding name. My father is one of Voldemort’s enemies—and still his wife and my half-siblings would probably kill me if I killed him! Pure-bloods make no fucking sense at all.”

Salazar grins while Desdemona all but cackles. “It’s a point of honor, Blythe. Your father and his wife may be separated by politics, but among Pure-bloods, spouses tend to want the honor of killing each other themselves. In fact…”

“There are not many married Pure-blood couples who are split among that ideological line, no,” Desdemona says, intuiting at once what Salazar is thinking. “You can’t tell us who your father is, but you can tell us who your father is not, yes?”

Blythe thinks about it before nodding. “No one’s ever really been that interested, but yeah, I think I can manage that.”

“How many children does your father have that he legally recognizes?” Salazar asks.

“Three. Two have graduated school already. I’m attending Hogwarts with the youngest one, a—” Blythe squeezes his eyes shut and grimaces. “Nothing about gender specifics. All right. They’re a fellow Ravenclaw, three years below me.”

“Sodding—” Salazar pinches the bridge of his nose, thinking he should be brewing up enough pain-relieving potions to fill the Channel. “Your father is Caspar Crouch Senior.”

Blythe’s mouth works and his head twitches. That is a confirmation, else the geas would allow him to deny it. “That was fast,” he finally says.

Salazar wills his headache away. “Not only did Caspar cheat on his wife, he did so with a Muggle.”

Desdemona looks at Salazar. “I find I can’t really fault Caspar for his choice to look for another partner to spend his time with. Charis has been unpleasant almost from the moment they signed their names to their marriage contract.”

“How?” Blythe asks. “I mean, how did you figure it out so quickly?”

“We’re well-versed in the who-is-who of Pure-blooded Wizarding Britain, as many of them follow Voldemort,” Desdemona tells him. “It is also good practice in general, as one never wishes to marry someone too close to their own bloodline.”

Blythe frowns. “You sound like you believe that Pure-blood ideology crap.”

“No,” Desdemona says. “Or at least, not in the way that others do. Sometimes one cannot help who they fall in love with. I loved my husband, but making certain our children would not be born with deformities becomes an immediate and important factor to consider when one British Pure-blood falls in love with another. Once upon a time, I was grateful our families had not closely aligned in that manner for some time, as it meant we could safely marry. Then Michael set his course upon following Voldemort. From that moment until the day he died, I didn’t really have a husband anymore.”

Blythe gives Desdemona a sympathetic look that shines with an utter lack of artifice. Salazar knows the young man is capable of artifice, else he would have been caught out before Desdemona noticed Blythe’s plight. With Blythe capable of so utterly putting such masks aside, Salazar is now doubly impressed by Blythe’s survival.

“I’m very sorry for that,” Blythe says. “I admit, after meeting my father’s wife, I was still angry with him…but I started feeling badly for him, too. That woman is…”

“She is a Black, and not one of the Sane Blacks, as a good friend puts it,” Salazar says. “Charis Crouch despises her husband, but she is a true Black in the sense that if anyone is going to kill Caspar, then Charis will be doing the deed herself. Her children might have differing political views, but as far as I know, their differing political views are just that; Caspar Junior, Charles, and Selene Crouch still love their father.”

Blythe pulls a face. “Sodding Pure-bloods. I suppose I’ll have to learn to act more like them, and understand them, and…fuck, mate, I’m an idiot. I had no idea what I was getting into, and now I have a cursed tattoo on my arm to show for it.”

“I would say it gets better, but I would be lying,” Desdemona says dryly. “Granted, working against Voldemort takes a firm heart and a spine of steel, whereas groveling at Voldemort’s feet takes no effort at all.”

“Maybe so,” Blythe replies, a sly hint to his smile, “but I’m not the groveling type.”

After Blythe is sent off for a wash and a decent night’s sleep in the safety of Desdemona’s guest room, she whirls on Salazar. “Voldemort took a Half-blood of no name and gave him the Mark within days of meeting the boy for the first time,” she hisses. “Why? Why would Voldemort do such a thing? He couldn’t even say it was Blythe’s N.E.W.T. scores that he found so impressive, as the boy hasn’t even sat them yet!”

“I don’t know.” This bothers Salazar, as well. So far, only those with wealth and influence in Wizarding Britain have been given Voldemort’s Mark. This is a disturbing and blatant deviation from that pattern. “Perhaps Voldemort felt kinship with another Half-blood who was abandoned by his father.”

Desdemona’s brow furrows in distaste. “I doubt Voldemort has ever felt kinship with anything but a mirror, and some days I doubt even that.”

Blythe doesn’t have long to train with Desdemona and Salazar to learn the ways of dwelling among those who only associate Pure-blooded wizards and witches. He quickly reminds Salazar of Aidan Lewis, the Gaelic spy he worked with during the European wars. They’re both excellent mimics of accents and mannerisms. Blythe learns Pure-blood culture and etiquette at a swift rate, and is ready to spy on other Pure-blooded Hogwarts students by the end of August. He’ll check in with them during the winter holidays, but otherwise, Blythe will be on his own until his graduation. It’s the safest initiation a spy could ever hope to receive.

“I’m surprised he learned it all so fast. Except for Hogwarts, he didn’t grow up knowing anything of Pure-blood customs at all,” Desdemona comments.

Salazar smiles. “That would be why this one was a Ravenclaw.” With his retrained mannerisms and precise knowledge, Blythe Petersen is going to make every Pure-blood around him forget that they ever considered him to be anything lesser to themselves: a Muggle-raised Half-blood. Even if Blythe hadn’t decided that spying to assist in Voldemort’s downfall was the wiser option, he would still need lessons such as these to survive among Death Eaters.

“Three Slytherins, a Hufflepuff, and a Ravenclaw.” Desdemona looks thoughtful. “I suppose we’ll eventually need a Gryffindor to round out the set, won’t we?”

Salazar thinks his headache might be returning with reinforcements. “It feels a great deal as if you’ve just cursed us.”

Desdemona might have uttered a curse, but it did not strike the Underground. On Hallowe’en, Voldemort leads a team of Death Eaters to personally decimate the Crouch Estate in Oxford. Martinus is the only one of them to learn of it before it happens, and he cannot send warning without being caught. Instead, he attempts to convince Charis’s sons, Caspar Junior and Charles, not to participate. Even if their politics differ, those who live in Oxford are _family_ to them, and one does not slaughter family unless they have truly earned it.

The idiots argue with Martinus, claiming that the rest of the Crouches are Blood Traitors, just like their father and uncle Barty. Martinus counters their stupidity by stunning the pair of them. He leaves them snoring in a parlor to sleep it off, but not before using a charm to saturate them with brandy fumes so strong that the pair still reek of alcohol for days afterward.

No one believes Caspar Junior and Charles when they wake and claim they drank nothing, that they weren’t toasting the demise of their family. The belief in their drunkenness keeps them safe from their mother’s potential wrath, and the far more dangerous wrath of Voldemort. The Dark Lord only forgives their lacking participation in the Crouch Raid after he discovers how thoroughly they celebrated it.

“Gods curse it,” Salazar mutters when he views the devastation later. It’s like a repeat of the Bones Massacre: the wards destroyed, evidence still remaining of the victim murdered to fuel the spell, all of the buildings burnt to the ground, and no known survivors. The estate had housed Caspar and Barty’s frail grandparents, their retired parents, their only sister, her spouse, and their three children, all of them younger than age eleven. Too young to be safely away at Hogwarts. Were it not for the fact that Caspar and Barty Crouch live on two different properties owned by the family, they would be dead, also, as would Anna and Barty Junior.

There is a single benefit to the slaughter, if one could claim a benefit at all. Bartemius Crouch finally removes his head from his arse and begins hammering at the Wizengamot to acknowledge that Wizarding Britain is at war.

“Just last week you claimed everything to be fine. Sodding hypocrite,” Teresa says of Crouch. “At least your brother isn’t as stupid as you are, Barty.”

“Adulterous, yes. Stupid, no,” Salazar agrees, but something about the slaughter leaves him with an ill feeling, even after the shock of it wears off. His little brother will be attacked on Hallowe’en in 1981, a mere seven years from now. He desperately hopes that Voldemort has not decided upon a new tradition.


	16. 1975

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’re about to be overrun, aren’t we?”
> 
> “We were overrun in January. I hope you’re not overly fond of sleeping, as I don’t think either of us are going to see much of it for quite a while.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual deserved beta-flail-reader credit to @norcumii.
> 
> In more general news: sod today. Stab it with a fork. A really big fucking fork. I'm trying to get over being sick, and several years of frustration and exhaustion decided to say hello all at once.
> 
> A REALLY BIG fork.

In January 1975, everything goes to hell in a fucking handbasket. There is no more subtlety from Voldemort, who seems to have lost patience with the idea of a slow takeover of the Ministry using a Death Eater majority. Perhaps he realized there is more to the Ministry of Magic than a Wizengamot of a mere one hundred members, and many of those Ministry employees are not interested in bowing to a self-declared Dark Lord. Perhaps it’s the mild winter, in which no snow bothers to fall in England or Wales, and even Scotland is wondering at the lack of proper weather. Regardless of cause, the result is the same: unending attacks, burnings, raids, and battles.

Salazar returns to the Willow House and collapses facedown onto his own sofa. At least he now has the ability to do so without landing atop someone else.

“Is it that bad out there?”

Salazar manages to lift his head. Teresa is regarding him from her wheelchair, lips pressed together in concern. They’d nearly fought a war over that bloody chair. She’d expected him to bring her one of Wizarding Britain’s wheeled chairs, designed by people who don’t understand that it’s not the 1700s any longer. That part of the war ended when she saw the Muggle version, though Salazar had to charm it to be lightweight, decrease the friction on the wheels and make them impervious to damage, then increase friction to the hand grips so that Teresa would have finer control. Transfiguring it required the pair of them, with Teresa seated in the chair, to be certain it was a good fit for someone of Teresa’s petite size. There were then prompt complaints about how the chair was entirely uncomfortable.

“Unfortunately, they tend not to make these chairs with a user’s comfort in mind,” Salazar muttered, helping Teresa to adjust new cushioning to the seat, adjustable armrests, and the backrest. She had her own wand again, chosen from among the many Salazar collected over the years, though it took her three frustrating days to decide that one of blackthorn suited best.

“Why not?” Teresa had asked, scowling. “Even those clunky wooden monstrosities built by Wizarding Britain are made for comfort!”

“Because…fuck.” Salazar rested his head on his arm. “Because too many fools still believe that someone in a wheelchair doesn’t have enough sense in their heads to notice a lack of comfort.”

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Teresa had replied. Then she’d nearly been caught out by the Ministry after going out into Muggle London for the first time in her new chair and hexing the blazes out of the first person to mock her for needing it, complete with insults regarding her intelligence.

“Is it that bad?” Salazar blinks a few times, realizing Teresa has now repeated the question. “Probably.”

“You’ve been gone three days, is all,” Teresa says. “You might want to shower off the blood.”

“Fuck that.” Salazar drops his face back down onto the sofa cushions. It isn’t as if the blood is going anywhere. “Have you heard from the others?”

“Bastian reports that the seventh-years at Hogwarts are flinging curses at each other every single time the staff’s back is turned. Desdemona killed another Death Eater in a duel to score political points, but also, she says, because he was a cowardly waste of skin and she didn’t like him. Martinus won money on the duel’s outcome. I think Desdemona instigated it just to distract herself from how many Death Eater raids occurred in the span of a single bloody week.”

“Bloody is definitely the word for it,” Salazar slurs into the cushions. “I’ll shower after I’ve lost consciousness for a bit. Have you found a flat you prefer?”

“Have I found one I prefer? Of course. Have I found one on the ground floor that isn’t already occupied? Of course not. I thought Wizarding Britain was bad for not being prepared for those who don’t have two properly working legs!”

“How many landlords have you cursed for treating you like an imbecile when you’ve turned up at the inquiry appointments for available flats?” Salazar asks.

Teresa sounds frustrated. “I stopped counting. Thank goodness I know French, and that I’ve been using Polyjuice to go out and about. The Ministry caught up to me and attempted to chew me a new one for cursing the latest fool, and likely would have figured out who I really am if I hadn’t quickly explained _why_ I’d cursed them. One of the investigating pair was an Auror who lost an arm during the first major Death Eater skirmish in 1972. I think he wanted to go back and curse the bastard again for good measure.”

Salazar pushes himself back upright. “That can’t happen again. You need a new identity.”

Teresa huffs out a sigh. “I know. I just don’t—I don’t _want_ one!”

“It’s temporary,” Salazar replies, even though he doesn’t yet know how temporary it may be. 1981 is a given, but what she chooses to do upon learning that Voldemort isn’t as dead as Wizarding Britain believes will be a mystery until it happens. “Saul Luiz isn’t even _my_ real name.”

That distracts her. “It’s not? What is it, then?”

Salazar grins.

Teresa scowls at him. “You’re a prick,” she says, and wheels herself away from the sofa, heading for the hallway.

Salazar grabs a cushion and pulls it over his head to block out most of the light in the room. At least now he’ll have at least an hour of peaceful sleep before Teresa decides she needs to yell at him again.

Nerys visits in February, looking put out by how unseasonably warm it is. Granted, Salazar hasn’t been home in several days, and Teresa has oft been in London for another round of flat-hunting. Nerys might be upset about waiting by a window for a day or three. Salazar apologizes and retrieves a letter from Monty from her leg. The owl immediately departs rather than linger for feather-scratching. It was definitely a long wait, then.

_Sal,_

_I finally did it. I sold the sticky burr that was my old company! The results would make a poor individual wealthy for life, but that was never the point. I just didn’t want to be responsible for it any longer. I’m too busy running my fool head off, trying to keep up with those younger than myself while also trying to stay alive._

_Good God, what the hell happened with the New Year, Sal? Why is it suddenly like this? I admit that Barty Senior finally having the whole of the M.L.E. up in arms regarding the war is a good thing, but truly, what the fuck?_

_Anyway, the proceeds from the sale of my ludicrously named company (They aren’t changing the name!) have found their way into a new vault. I’ve already written a contract with the goblins, as well as filed the appropriate updates to my will. The vault will be granted to James upon his eventual marriage. The spouse will automatically be added by goblin contract to name them a mutual, equal owner of the vault’s contents. I want no one questioning whether or not the family thinks the spouse is lesser for their status._

Salazar frowns and looks in the direction of his brother’s portrait. “Nizar, did you ever mention to Monty that you’re a Half-blood?”

Nizar tilts his head and thinks about it for a moment. “Oh. Yes, I did. To be fair, he was seventeen years old at the time, and I never thought it would be something to concern ourselves about. He guessed that James will marry someone Muggle-born, I take it?”

“If the wording of this letter is anything to go by, Monty not only discerned such, but is making contingency plans to protect them in a Pure-blood dominated society that’s gone bloody mad. Monty has arranged for a gift of a marriage vault, and I suspect that even if there was a divorce that split the contents, your mother would still be set for life.”

“And that would be yet another thing I knew nothing about,” Nizar says. “I wonder what happens to it.”

 _I hope it will still belong to two living, breathing parents,_ Salazar thinks, but he doesn’t speak of such things aloud anymore. They’re both aware of the ticking clock that is always counting down the remaining seconds until 31st October 1981.

* * * *

In April, there is a brief reprieve. Salazar highly doubts that Voldemort suddenly gained concern for his followers’ health and decided they needed to rest, but for several glorious weeks, excepting a few meetings, rest is what they receive.

Salazar watches “Edward the Seventh” on the telly with Nizar’s portrait, the first program they’ve viewed together in what now feels like decades. He refuses to ask Nizar where he found popcorn, as he’s certain that none of the few portraits in this house have it, nor do they even have corn plants. Like the mysterious appearance of the painted sofa, some questions are best left unasked.

The short-lived television program is entertaining for being accurate while still wildly dramatized. Salazar isn’t certain he needed to be reminded so well of the politics that began the first World War.

Nizar didn’t need to remind him of the grenade incident during the second war, either. Salazar flings a teacup at the portrait when Nizar is unrepentant.

“You injure yourself in glorious fashion at least twice a century, and that grenade incident was the second!” Nizar taunts him from down the hall, laughing.

“NOT INTENTIONALLY!” Salazar yells back, incensed. Some days Nizar is so much a person to him that he forgets that throwing a teacup at a portrait is not effective in the slightest. It only means he has a teacup to repair and a mess to clean.

Salazar has literally lost the plot of “Doctor Who” but he doesn’t really mind. It’s rather easy to get ensnared by the program again, though the Daleks suddenly have a leader named Davros who is…well…

“Yeah, he ranks up there with rebodied Voldemort for creepiness.” Nizar’s portrait sounds disturbed. “I wouldn’t want to run into that three-eyed bastard in a graveyard. Or anywhere else.”

April also brings about the end of the Vietnam War, such as it is. The U.S. and her few remaining allies evacuate, and South Vietnam is snatched up by North Vietnam, ending the division that caused a war in the first place. “Then what was the fucking point?” Salazar grumbles at the telly as the news is broadcast. He knows there were riots and protests in the States regarding the war, but abandoning the helpless to those who would slaughter them is not a just solution.

How many times has he borne witness to such things? How many more of these moments will he witness before Voldemort finds his end?

The second day of June brings the sleet and snow that failed to arrive during the past winter. Salazar stares out at his frozen lawn and equally suffering garden, baffled and infuriated. “When was the last fucking time in snowed in _June?_ ” He knows it has happened before, but usually some major event within the earth warns him of the possibility. This year, there was no such warning.

“1791!” Nizar’s portrait yells from the living room.

“Thank you.” Salazar looks again at his devastated herbs and vegetables. “Bloody hell.” He’s not a picky eater, but he still prefers fresh vegetables over frozen, and many of those herbs were destined for potions. He suspects he’ll be doing quite a bit of the shopping in London this summer, Muggle and magical both.

Only a day or so later, temperatures are baking hot. No one in England is the least bit impressed.

“I missed two earthquakes!” Salazar exclaims as he returns home after a day spent pouring through newspaper archives in a London library. “One in India in January, and one in sodding China in February!”

“Enough to muck about with the weather, then?” Teresa asks, fascinated. She had no idea that violent acts of the earth could affect the weather, including a lack of knowledge regarding a volcano’s intimate and swift means of changing the global climate. Salazar has found himself purchasing more textbooks of Muggle science to satisfy her rabid curiosity, though he notices almost at once that she leans heavily towards botany, biology, and eventually, chemistry. Teresa learns enough about spatial sciences, satellites, and the moon landings to be in awe of the events, but otherwise has no interest; geology she studies only long enough to be conversant in its basic ideas, as well as the fascinating aspect of carbon dating.

If someone had told Salazar at age twenty-one that the world he lived upon was over four billion years old, he would never have believed them. Those of Hogewáþ were enlightened scholars for their time, but four billion was a vast, incomprehensible number. The term _billion_ did not even properly exist until sometime around the 1500s, and the idea of one thousand million was not much older. Perhaps the astronomers in India had already considered such things in their quest to measure the sky, but Salazar did not encounter the idea in common academic thought until many years later.

“Two such powerful earthquakes would definitely affect the weather, yes.” Salazar is still irritated with himself for missing the earthquakes. He suddenly wonders how many nuclear detonations he’s not felt due to his preoccupation with Voldemort’s war.

He should have taken the odd weather as a warning. More fool him that he did not.

Voldemort doesn’t wait until the end of term to grant them their next reprieve from spying. It begins with the snow, as if Voldemort finds the cold to be distasteful. The Underground has Martinus and his Dark Mark to alert them if anything changes, but otherwise, it seems as if this year will grant them three months of quiet rather than two. What gatherings there are of Voldemort’s new court are few but for the one in June that curls around the wedding nuptials of Lucius Abraxus Malfoy and Narcissa Theia Black. Their marriage means that it is no longer safe for any Polyjuiced or glamoured spy to dare Malfoy Manor. It will now be Narcissa Malfoy who arranges most of the Manor’s social affairs, and she is a Black. The house-elves working the manor will be under strict orders to announce each of the Manor’s visitors by their true names and titles.

“I’m so sorry,” Salazar says to Martinus.

Martinus shrugs. “The food is good.”

“I was apologizing for your need to endure the company of Lucius, Abraxus, and Delphina Malfoy on a regular basis.”

“Not the new Madam Malfoy?” Martinus asks, curious.

“Better it be her than Bellatrix,” is Salazar’s response. Narcissa Black Malfoy is at least a good conversationalist, though she is often as bloodthirsty as her sister. Andromeda and her husband Ted Tonks are now an active part of Dumbledore’s unofficial group, which will almost certainly mean that she will one day battle against her Death Eater sisters.

“FINALLY!” Teresa suddenly shrieks, sending Salazar scrambling for his wand and Martinus wisely diving for cover. “IT’S ABOUT TIME, YOU SODDING BASTARDS!”

Martinus peers out from behind one of Salazar’s armchairs. “That wheeled chair has taught her too many foul words.”

“It wasn’t the bloody chair.” Salazar lowers his wand and reminds himself to breathe. There was a jangle before the shout; Teresa had just rang off. “I hate you. I take it you are now the proud owner of a flat?”

“To hell with that,” Teresa retorts. “I gave up on flats when you put the idea of a house into my head. I’ll be letting one of those, and it was last lived in by an old Muggle woman for thirty years. The landlord was just about to take down the ramps and whatnot he installed so his tenant could keep living there when I phoned him. He asked if I wanted the ramps. I said if he took the ramps away, I might commit murder. The poor man thought I was joking. I’ll be signing on for a house tomorrow!”

“Congratulations, Trinity,” Salazar says.

Teresa turns her chair, already pulling a face. “That sounds so odd. I’d best get used to it though, shouldn’t I? It’ll be that name I use tomorrow. Trinity Jayne Sutherland.”

“It has a nicer ring to it than Martin Williams,” Martinus points out. “Though perhaps mine is easier to recall.”

“Muggle names, Muggle addresses, Muggle identification, Muggle transport…” Teresa blows out a long sigh. “Is now a bad time to admit that I’m afraid to live alone?”

Salazar shakes his head. “There is no shame in that. Ask Desdemona to stay with you for a few days after you move house. She enjoys Muggle London, and wouldn’t want to pass up the opportunity to visit a Muggle home.”

“That is a nice thought,” Teresa says thoughtfully. Then she looks at Salazar. “Why are you volunteering Desdemona? You could do the same. It isn’t as if we’re not used to sharing the same space.”

“Because you are still a young woman, and I’d hate to see you accused of improper behavior by foolish neighbors,” Salazar replies. “I’d also like to not be accused of being your father.”

Teresa rolls her eyes. “Muggle views on proper behavior are worse than Pure-blood courting, then. Lovely.”

“But their dating customs are far more relaxed,” Martinus says. “I would have had a much easier time of convincing my wife to marry me if that had been our standard.”

“You’re sending me out to live in backwards land,” Teresa complains.

Salazar snorts. “This house is in a village that is most decidedly _not magical_. You already live in backwards land, Trinity Sutherland. Just remember that backwards land has benefits, such as takeaway Chinese food.”

Teresa’s expression brightens. “Oh, yes. That’s right, isn’t it?”

Martinus, having been introduced to the fried joy of Muggle takeaway on several occasions, also seems pleased. “It sounds as if you’ve found an ideal house in which to dwell.”

“I think so, yes,” Teresa agrees, beaming. “Oh, and I heard from Bastion—”

“Who is Bastion?” Martinus asks. “Is that our newest member, B—”

Salazar treats Martinus to a flat stare when Martinus gives him a wounded look for stomping on his foot. “Separation, Martin.”

“Oh. Yes.” Martinus sighs. “My apologies, Teresa. What did Bastion have to say?”

Teresa treats Salazar to her favorite suspicious glare before speaking. “There is rumor coming from those standing in the Dark Lord’s newly established Inner Circles. He’s not going to let the summer remain quiet.”

“Dammit,” Salazar whispers.

Martinus grinds his teeth. He was looking forward to a quiet summer, as well. His wife, Gertrude Bulstrode Flint, is due to give birth to their first child in late August or early September. Neither of them yet know if the baby is male or female; Martinus would rather be present to prevent Gertrude from trying to get rid of an unwanted first girl. Martinus doesn’t care what gender his first child is as long as they are healthy, but no matter how many times he has informed Gertrude that being male is not necessary for a Flint to inherit the family seat, she is intent on having a boy for an heir. For the infant’s sake, Salazar hopes that Gertrude Flint has a boy. He strongly suspects that any girl, even a properly acknowledged one, would soon suffer an unfortunate “accident.”

“We’ll remain alert, then,” Salazar says. “Do you need help tomorrow, Trinity?”

“No, I think I can manage, much as I truly dislike Apparating in a bloody chair,” she replies. “Martin, you’ll remain safe?”

Martinus glances at Salazar and then nods, recognizing that they’ve again shifted the behavior of the Underground. From now on, it is their other identities they will use for each other. “What does our other friend call herself? I don’t yet know that name.”

“She chose Monica Davies, but if you want to know the reasoning behind it, you’d need to ask her,” Salazar answers. Desdemona mostly seems amused by her Muggle name and identification, though she has also vowed to learn to operate a car. Salazar wishes her luck on that; he isn’t interested in learning to drive a machine that pollutes the air every moment its engine is running. He can Apparate anywhere on this island he needs to go.

“What about you?” Martin asks.

Salazar smiles. “Saul is not my real name. I’ve already taken this step.”

Martin gives one of his rare grins. “What is your real name, then?”

Salazar glances at Trinity, who rolls her eyes, then looks back to Martin. “I hope that you will both live long enough to find out.”

* * * *

Salazar is disappointed to learn that he missed a film released in January that is meant to be a biography of Galileo Galilee. He’d like to know if it is accurate, or another fanciful embellishment of yet another historical figure. Someone else recommends _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_. He finds a cinema still showing the film, sits down, and hopes it isn’t a riot of color.

It isn’t a riot of color, but that becomes a moot point right at the start. Salazar is all but certain the film would be entertaining if he’d not spent the majority of it completely bewildered. The blend of clothing styles and buildings from multiple eras he actually lived through is disorienting, as is the dialogue, the intent, and the random…police car?

He gives up. He’ll attempt to see this film again at a later date. Perhaps then Salazar will be able to look past the blended historical disaster to enjoy its strange plot.

Even in London, Salazar is often immersed in Death Eater antics and Pure-blood politics. Death Eaters meet often in Diagon Alley, which merely gives Salazar another means of keeping an eye on the idiots. They don’t wear the robes and masks in public, of course, but it’s obvious that Death Eaters are what they are. Salazar wonders if the stronger twits among them are aware of the danger they radiate, that they give themselves away and cause others to retreat from their path.

Strong does not mean intelligent. The smart ones are those whom others would never suspect. Lucius Malfoy is a good example. The younger Malfoy walks an extremely fine line between intellectual up-and-coming politician and hateful young braggart with a skill Salazar would envy in a man who would use such talent to good purpose.

Despite being older than Narcissa Malfoy, Bellatrix Black is not yet wed after rejecting her parents’ original choice of spouse. Cygnus and Druella don’t insist Bellatrix choose another to marry, possibly because they are also quite wisely terrified of her. Bellatrix Black is not the sort to regret murdering her parents if she found them too irritating to endure.

A bit of spying within Dumbledore’s gathered group of supporters grants Salazar the means to finally meet Andromeda Black Tonks, though at first his heart nearly explodes at the shock of finding Bellatrix Black standing in a room where Andromeda is meant to be. Good gods, their resemblance is uncanny. The difference is in Andromeda’s eyes, which are keen and kind where Bellatrix’s are joyfully vicious. Andromeda’s long strands of curling hair are not stark black, but a very deep, dark brown with beautiful red-violet undertones.

Thank goodness Salazar is taking the place of an unkempt young Muggle-born thief named Mundungus Fletcher that evening. Andromeda Tonks is polite, but doesn’t want to linger in his company. Salazar will get over his shock and attempt to discover more about her later, in a different guise, as the eldest of the Black sisters seems to be one of the few of his House who graduated Hogwarts with an understanding of what it truly means to be a Slytherin.

The meeting itself is held inside a dreary section of Longbottom Manor that hasn’t been used for decades. It reminds Salazar of his one brief visit to 12 Grimmauld Place, when Pollux Black invited Voldemort to use his home for a Death Eater meeting two years ago. Even Voldemort was not impressed with the Black family’s sense of cleanliness and décor. Salazar was glad that Sirius and Regulus were safe at Hogwarts, as he was also filled with the longing desire to strangle the life out of every Black currently in residence. Perhaps this is where Walburga learned that it was fine to ensnare and marry her close cousin Orion, as Salazar is all but certain that Pollux and Cassiopeia Black are sleeping together. Alphard’s difficulties in disentangling himself from his parents and leaving this house, Sirius and Regulus’s individual bad habits and unsettling behavior—all makes perfect sense, as they live with fucking mad people. Dorea must take after her grandmother, Ella Mae Max, as she is nothing like her vile siblings. Orion Black is the only one who is even close to sane and civilized, but to say he is the least badly behaved of all those present is like saying that Cnut’s people only invaded and slaughtered a _little bit_ of England.

Listening to Dumbledore speak to his gathered followers is as enlightening as it is disturbing. “I know that we are all used to the summer months being quiet and largely free of Death Eater activity,” Albus Dumbledore says, “but do not be fooled. If we are complacent, the Dark Lord will use that complacency against us. We must be vigilant—”

“CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” Alastor Moody roars. Salazar isn’t the only one to glare at him.

“Rightly so,” Dumbledore continues, his eyes twinkling merrily. “I hope we will all get to enjoy this year’s rather warm summer, but there are rumors that the Dark Lord plans to change his previous habits.”

“What rumors?” Elphinstone Urquhart asks. Salazar is unfamiliar with that wizard, but he is sitting beside Minerva McGonagall, who remains utterly beautiful…and their body language speaks of familiar intimacy. They are dating, possibly even betrothed, though he sees no ring on Minerva’s hand.

 _Be happy,_ he thinks, even though it pains his heart to see that that any chance to court Minerva McGonagall are dust. _Find all the joy you can, and claim it fiercely_.

“How do you know this, Albus?” grizzled Elphias Doge asks.

“Oh, I have my ways,” Albus Dumbledore says, the words accompanied by even more of that irritating twinkling.

Monty leans forward in his seat. “Albus, we are all on the same side. _Our_ side.” Several other members murmur in agreement, including Andromeda and Ted Tonks, Harfang and Callidora Longbottom, the Weasleys, and certain of the Prewetts. Interesting. They follow Albus Dumbledore, yes, but at least some of those present are willing to demand the truth that is owed to them.

“Whether or not Barty and the M.L.E. actually carries through with recognizing this group, we are all here to defend Wizarding Britain,” Monty continues. “One group, Albus. We go out and fight while trusting in each other. We can’t have secrets, or we endanger that trust, and that’s when we’ll start dying. I, for one, would like to avoid the dying part.”

Salazar bites back a smile Mundungus Fletcher would not indulge in, too busy worrying about his own unwashed hide. Not a politician, his entire backside.

“So would I,” Filius Flitwick says in a dry voice. Beside him, Malcolm McGonagall nods vigorously in agreement. “Albus, please tell us. Trust us as we trust in you.”

“Very well,” Albus Dumbledore concedes. “You’ve raised an excellent point, Fleamont.”

Salazar internally seethes. The man is a master of scolding and praising another using the exact same words. Estefania would loathe him—not for his skill, but for the manner in which he uses it.

“There may be another resistance group in Britain. Sometimes we receive messages from them that are not traceable by magic or mundane means. I trust this intelligence more on some days than others, but I think in this particular instance, they’re right. Voldemort is planning something, and he’ll likely capture all of Wizarding Britain’s attention when he does so.”

Dorcas Meadows’s near-black skin turns ashy blue-violet as she pales. “God, please not another family slaughter. Not after what was done to the Bones and Crouch families.”

“We don’t yet know if that is what he has in mind,” Albus Dumbledore refutes in what manages to seem like reassurance. “But as Alastor insists, we will be vigilant. We will be cautious. We have our ways of alerting each other to danger. We will, as young Fleamont reminds us, continue to rely on each other.”

Monty waits until Albus Dumbledore leaves the room. “I am forty-six years old with a teenager attending Hogwarts,” he hisses.

“Oh, don’t pay it much mind, Monty,” Hagrid’s voice booms out. A moment later, his large hand claps down on Monty’s shoulder. He doesn’t seem to notice that he nearly knocks Monty out of his chair by doing so. “We both know Dumbledore’s just like that, him bein’ as old as he is. He’s not yet stopped calling me a lad, and I’m nearabouts your age, too!”

“Thanks, Hagrid.” Monty’s words for Hagrid are honest, his expression clear of all signs of irritation, but those who truly know him would recognize at once that Monty is still displeased. Unfortunately, it seems as if most of those in this room are not capable of realizing that Dumbledore was subtly undermining Monty’s standing within the group. The others will now be less inclined to listen to his words and ideas. They won’t even notice their own building aversion, and Monty knows it.

Salazar glances around the room while pretending to be overly interested in a gilt-edged antique still lying on the table. It’s those who are the children of Blacks, who came from a household where paranoia was a way of survival, who might’ve noticed. Andromeda Tonks is certainly aware, though Ted Tonks remains oblivious. Septimus and Cedrella are conferring in low voices; if Cedrella’s expression is to be judged by its cool nature, she is furious. A moment later, they both wave Monty over. Monty, capable of recognizing that he is in the company of a Sane Black, gladly joins them. The Weasley sons, Ignatius, Bilius, and Arthur, stand in their own small circle. At one point, Arthur’s eyes flick over to Monty and his parents, a moment of keen observation swiftly hidden beneath an expression of a rather bland pleasant nature. Salazar nearly breaks character in appreciation for the cunning he has just witnessed from a Gryffindor-graduated half-Black Weasley. That one will be fun to watch in the years between the wars.

Harfang and Callidora are with Minerva McGonagall, her brother Malcolm, and Elphinstone Urquhart. “You should get married this summer, just as you’d planned,” Callidora is saying. “If you wait on the whims of that madman, it may never happen at all!”

Salazar ignores the sensation of the bottom plummeting out of his stomach. This is not the first time he has encountered such a lost opportunity. He can and will bear it.

“It just seems such a crass thing to do,” Minerva McGonagall is replying, the Scots burr in her voice more pronounced than Salazar is accustomed to hearing. “To be happily wed when so many are still mourning what they have lost…”

“Nonsense,” Harfang chides her. “I know I’m only thirteen years older than you, Minerva, but take it as the wisdom of a doddering old sod. No one but a fool is going to begrudge you and Finn here for taking a moment to be happy.”

“Even if my own baby sister would be one of them,” Callidora says in displeasure. “If Charis dares to show her face at the wedding ceremony, slap her senseless. Merlin knows I’ll certainly be attempting to climb over the guests in order to do the same!”

“God knows this war didn’t stop Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black from marrying,” Malcolm reminds his sister. “Heard it was a right festival of excess, too.”

“Well…” Minerva McGonagall looks at Elphinstone Urquhart, a smile tugging at her lips. “Perhaps.”

“It isn’t as if Robert and Malcolm haven’t already threatened to remove my organs if I muck things up,” Elphinstone Urquhart says, grinning. It makes Salazar inclined to think well of him, even though his envy remains. Malcolm is still as much a firebrand as his sister, and Robert McGonagall is a popular ordained wizarding minister with a wife and Hogwarts-age daughter. If Elphinstone Urquhart sat through a pair of Scottish brothers threatening a man on behalf of their sister and came through intact, it speaks well of his intentions.

“That settles it. We’ll have it here at the manor,” Callidora says, which gains her Minerva McGonagall’s startled attention.

“What? No, we couldn’t possibly—”

 _Time to depart,_ Salazar orders himself. “Mundungus Fletcher” nicks a dusty picture-frame whose golden appearance is paint rather than true metal on his way out. The Longbottoms know by now not to leave anything truly valuable in a space where Mundungus Fletcher will be spending any length of time whatsoever.

Salazar allows himself to concentrate on truly hating Albus Dumbledore as he leaves the manor. He’ll give himself until the Multa Facies Sucus wears off, and then he will once again put that hatred aside. Like it or not, Wizarding Britain needs that twinkling bastard.

He slips the Invisibility Cloak out of his pocket and puts it on as he feels the potion wearing off. If he waits at the Apparition point beyond the manor’s wards, he may get the opportunity he’s looking for.

He does; Monty approaches the Apparition point alone after most of the others have already gone. “What the actual sodding hell does Albus think he’s playing at?” Monty mutters under his breath.

“Power,” Salazar answers, causing Monty to jerk his head up and yank his wand free before he recognizes Salazar’s voice.

“Sal! Dammit! I don’t think I needed that bit of heart failure,” Monty gasps, putting his wand away. “Where are you?”

“Lurking under a certain Cloak, and it’s probably best I not take it off. I thought you spoke well, by the way.”

“You were inside the manor.” Monty straightens his shoulders, taking in and releasing a deep breath. “Some days, that man drives me to drink. Today is likely to be one of them, but I’ll wait until James is distracted in his bedroom for the evening. He’s up to something, but won’t confess; he only promises me that it’s harmless.”

Salazar smiles. “I’ll wager you an excellent vintage of wine that he’s attempting to become an Animagus.”

“Please stop telling me these things,” Monty begs. “You’re cheating, you’re teasing me, and you’re leaving me astonished as well, because it sounds as if he succeeds!”

“As far as I’m aware, he does, though I’m uncertain of when.”

“His Transfiguration is God-awful,” Monty says ruefully. “Are you certain?”

“Transfiguration and an Animagus Form are two different masteries within the same branch of magic, though learning the latter will certainly help him understand the former better than he currently does.”

“Now there is the teacher I used to hear. I’ve missed that.” Monty’s smile is far too brief. He takes off his spectacles, blinking a few times. “No matter how fine the glass, it doesn’t matter. It still gives me a headache to wear them now.”

“I’m certain the clear eyesight makes up for the headache each time,” Salazar says.

“Oh, it does. I know you received Dad’s letter regarding the potion, but he downplayed his reaction. Dad was absolutely giddy to be able to see so well again. Even Mum appreciated the renewed clarity, though she didn’t truly need spectacles yet. Euphemia is the only one of us who, pun not intended, saw no difference at all.” Monty rubs the bridge of his nose. “I’d love to give a dose to James, but there would be too many questions. Besides, if he won’t yet trust me with his doings, I can’t yet trust him with vital secrets. When he’s ready to confide in me, then perhaps he’ll learn that he doesn’t have to wander around with shoddy eyesight anymore.”

“I think that is the decision of the wise parent I suggested you be.”

“Thank you.” Monty sighs and then turns in place, now fully facing Salazar even if Monty still cannot see him. “What do you think Voldemort is up to?”

“I’ve no idea, but we know there will be _something._ If he follows the pattern of his previous large-scale horrors, Voldemort will say nothing to anyone of his plans until he suddenly calls for certain of his Death Eaters to accompany him. They’ll depart together with no chance for us to warn anyone unless a spy is among the chosen. Even then, there still may not be opportunity for that spy to send warning to others.”

“I take it that happens far too often for anyone’s preference,” Monty murmurs.

“We are still far too _few,_ ” Salazar growls. “I know that will change, but right now it makes things difficult. Monty, there are so many of these fools. If you count _all_ who are against Voldemort, still we’re outnumbered at least twenty to one.” Trinity thinks that number is higher, and wants to do the maths to prove it. Salazar asked her not to; he doesn’t need to be so miserably depressed when things are already dire.

“Good God.” Monty briefly rests his clenched fist over his mouth. “Jesus wept.”

“Whatever Voldemort has planned, I think it’s a sign,” Salazar says, though he hates to see Monty turn so fearfully pale. “We thought the turning of the year was bad, but I fear this war is about to become a nightmare.”

* * * *

Salazar isn’t trying to locate Lily Juniper Evans when he finds himself crossing paths with her again—not in Diagon Alley, but on Charing Cross Road on 8th July. He recognizes her fiery red hair and halts in place, letting others walk around him. He hasn’t seen her in public since discovering her identity in September 1971. Like Sirius Black, James Potter, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Severus Snape, Selene Crouch, Octavian Burke, and so many others, she will begin her fifth year at Hogwarts in September.

Lily Evans is tall for her age, though Salazar thinks she has already reached her full height. She is just coming into the fullness of youthful beauty, and stands with the confidence of a lady. Despite her rather shabby ensemble of torn bell-bottom denims, scuffed trainers, and a flowing green shirt with unraveling cuffs. Lily Evans is so much closer now to resembling the wife and mother who Salazar once witnessed die in a Horcrux’s retained memory.

Her eyes are the exact same shade of emerald green that Nizar’s had once been, before he chose to be rid of that eye color entirely. It’s a bit daunting to see it again now.

“You should get it, Sev. You like it, after all,” the girl is saying.

“Liking it and knowing exactly how much pocket change I’ve on me are two different things, Lily,” her companion says. He’s taller than Evans, but still in that unfortunate stage when a lad seems to be composed of naught but arms and legs. Severus Snape has retained his extremely pale skin, almost as if he is in a constant state of ill health. Given the pinched look around his black eyes, the young man is certainly stressed—though Salazar loses his glimpse of Severus’s eyes when he purposefully shakes his lank black hair over his face to hide them. That habit of youth looks so practiced that it must be heavily relied upon.

“I could get it for you, Sev,” Lily offers.

“Lily—”

“Friends _do_ that for each other, Severus. You wouldn’t be in my debt!”

“It’s a Slytherin thing, Lily.” Severus pinches his lips together. “Unless you would accept a potion in trade.”

Lily grins, bright and shining in a way that tells Salazar that she has a strong, kind heart. No doubt a temper, as well, but that shine of kindness eases his quiet fears that the tale of Nizar’s parents and their willing sacrifice was nothing more than propaganda meant to soothe the wizarding masses.

Salazar casts the Invisibility Charm and follows the teenagers as they walk along, curious as to where they’re off to that would necessitate the need for a trade. “I cannot believe they made you a Prefect,” Severus says.

“I know!” Lily exclaims. “It’s ridiculous. What have I ever done that means I should be a Prefect?”

Severus doesn’t hesitate. “You punched Sirius Black in the face.”

“I don’t think that counts, even if he deserved it,” Lily says. “Still, a Prefect. Who do you think the other Gryffindor Prefect is?”

“If it’s James Potter, I’ll be publicly accusing Professor McGonagall of being pissed out of her mind when she made her choices for Prefects.”

Lily laughs. “Oh, I truly doubt it’s Potter. Who do you think will have it in Slytherin? Or are you hiding a Prefect’s badge at home?”

Severus snorts his opinion of that. “As if Slughorn would ever consider someone who couldn’t also further _his_ position. No, the Prefects will be wealthy and influential, like Malfoy had been.”

“Lucius Malfoy is a prick.”

“I’m not arguing with facts.” Severus thinks about it. “I’d wager on Adrian Carmichael. Influential, famous family, not a Death Eater.”

“I think Octavian will be one of Ravenclaws Prefects,” Lily says.

Severus nods. “He’s intelligent enough. The letters came out early this year, though. It’s weird.”

Lily hesitates. “Maybe they’re worried something is going to happen.”

“They’d best be ready to pay for my schoolbooks, then, because I’m not shopping in the Alley if it’s on bloody fire,” Severus replies. “Irene Selwyn for Slytherin’s other Prefect, by the way.”

“Ew!” Lily exclaims. “Her? She’s…well, she certainly acts like a Death Eater.”

“Maybe,” Severus says, though even he sounds as if Irene’s status as a Death Eater is a certainty. “But she’s a Selwyn who’s dating seventh-year Marcus Talbot, who is _definitely_ going to be the Talbot heir. Her cousin in Slytherin is Guinevere Greengrass, meaning the heir to the Greengrass family fortune is Irene’s uncle. Slughorn will be all but drooling at the idea of having her indebted to him in any way.”

“I understood about half of that,” Lily complains cheerfully. “Definitely no trouble understanding the last part, though.” She pulls open a shop door, revealing that they’ve reached their destination. “Slughorn is completely ridiculous.”

“The phrase you’re really looking for is _useless twat_.”

“Sev!”

Salazar follows them into a record shop, which always has a pleasant blend of scents from the fresh ink, pressed paper, and vinyl. There are also the newer cassette tapes, but their selection is small compared to the records that still dominate the shop.

He doesn’t trust cassette tapes. He remembers how easy it is for magnetic tape to rip, tear, and burn.

“ _Surrealistic Pillow_ , huh?” The clerk minding the till could stand to wash his face a bit more, and his eyes shine with the sharpness of greed. “Want the original, do you?”

“No. The original British release doesn’t have “White Rabbit.’” Severus sounds firm, but not disdainful. Salazar thinks that could easily change.

“We’re looking for the import from across the pond,” Lily Evans says in a far more accommodating tone, though Severus’s eyes narrow when the clerk’s eyes drop to focus upon Lily’s chest.

“Right, that. I’ve only got the one copy. It’ll cost you a tenner,” the clerk says.

“ _What?_ ” Lily glares at the clerk until he looks up at her. “That’s _extortion_. An import is just six pounds, even when it’s a good one!”

The clerk looks smug. “That’s my price. Take it or leave it, girlie.”

Severus gives the clerk a flat stare. “Wait here. We need to speak about it,” he says, and guides Lily away with a cautious nudge to her upper arm.

“He’s lying,” Lily growls. “He’s definitely got more than one copy lying about, and he’s cheating us, besides!”

“We’ve checked every other shop in London, Cokeworth, and a few other places we’re really not meant to be,” Severus counters in resignation. “Even if he’s cheating us, we won’t find it anywhere else.”

“I’ve only got six pounds, Sev. That’s why I offered to get it for you!”

Severus looks thoughtful. “If we knew where it was located in the shop, we could just nick it.”

“Severus.” Lily stares at him until Severus flushes. “I know you’ve done that a few times, and with Black Sabbath, that berk clerk utterly deserved it, but that’s not the answer every time you’re short a pence or three!”

“Yeah—yeah. I know—I know that.” Salazar files away _stutters when anxious_ and continues to watch.

Severus retrieves a Muggle leather wallet that looks like it’s been pounded on with a sledgehammer, left in a bog, and then pounded on a bit more. “Wait—I forgot my spare change from lunch. I’ve got four pounds and…a few pence,” he says after counting it out. “That’ll clear us.”

Lily grins. “We’ll have joint custody of a vinyl record, Sev.”

“There are probably worse things to have joint custody of.”

“Cave trolls,” Lily suggests, and Severus pulls quite the entertaining face in response.

Lily and Severus return to the counter. “My eyes are up here,” Lily says, pointing at her own face. The clerk jerks his head up, his ears turning as red as his spotty skin.

Severus lays the money down on the countertop, but keeps his hand firmly atop it. Wise young man. “We have your ten pounds, but I want to see the album first.”

“Fine. Bloody kids.” The clerk stomps off, vexed not by the sale, but by being caught staring.

“At least I never catch _you_ ogling my tits,” Lily says, stifling a giggle.

“I have absolutely zero interest in your chest,” Severus returns dryly, but he smiles.

The sale completed, the two make off with their wrapped vinyl import. Salazar resolves to find his own copy, as he’s rather fond of “White Rabbit” as well. First, though…

Salazar drops the Invisibility Charm and approaches the clerk. “ _Buenos tardes, necio idiota_. It seems we need to have a bit of a discussion regarding propriety.”

“What are you, their dad?” The clerk rolls his eyes. “Get lost, old man.”

“Perhaps in a bit. First, though: how old are you?”

The clerk straightens to his full height, five inches taller than Salazar. He’s never understood why so many men believe that their height lends weight to their words. Even Godric wasn’t foolish enough to underestimate a shorter man. “Twenty-three. What’s it to you?”

“Twenty-three.” Salazar nods. “Are you oft in the habit of fantasizing about young women who are underage?”

“Oh, fuck off,” the clerk retorts. “Get out of my shop, old man, before I call the coppers on you.”

“ _Oh, pedófilo. Soy mucho más viejo de lo que puedas imaginar…_ ”[1]

Salazar leaves six pounds on the counter to cover the cost of the other import copy of _Surrealistic Pillow_ he finds hidden in the back. He’ll be dwelling on ways for the young ones to recover their money, though that pathetic clerk will now think long on whether or not to continue his vile habits.

Nizar’s portrait sighs in resignation when Salazar tells him about the encounter. “They’re still not dating-close, right?”

Salazar grins. “No, _hermanito_. It’s a shame that you were told so little of their lives. They are certainly close friends who understand the ways of Slytherin trade, though your mother doesn’t seem fond of the notion.” He thinks on what else could be said. “Lily Evans looked to be happy and content with her life. She has a temper, and no difficulties in speaking her mind…but she is kind. Of that, I have no doubt at all.”

“I’m glad.” The portrait waits and then rolls his eyes when Salazar doesn’t say anything else. “And what about Snape, then? Come on, I’m all but dying for gossip on the man who is going to be a caustic fucking bastard in twenty years!”

“Severus Snape is quite fond of the company he keeps in regards to Miss Evans,” Salazar says. The portrait begins swearing at him, a vile mix of _Castellano_ and Parseltongue. “He otherwise seems to be quite unhappy. Given the summer holiday, I would assume his household is just as unpleasant as it was when he was five years of age. The passing years might even have made it worse.”

Nizar is incensed. “Does anyone I once knew have a normal fucking family?”

“Considering I must discard many candidates based on the rest of their family? So far, only your father seems to qualify.”

“Given my experiences over the past century, I don’t think my father’s family counts as normal, either,” Nizar replies, rolling his eyes. “I wonder when Snape decides that life as a Death Eater is better than hanging about with a Muggle-born?”

“I’ve no idea, but I imagine it will be soon.” Salazar thinks the same of _many_ young Slytherins, and it’s of great disappointment to them both. “Of the person he is now, though? I can’t see it. Severus Snape loves your mother as the best of friends love one another. Something must occur that makes him believe it necessary.”

“Now I’m feeling sympathy for Snape. Thanks so much for that.”

“You’re welcome, _hermanito._ ”

* * * *

If there are any signs of Voldemort’s impending attack, they miss them all. Martin’s Dark Mark isn’t called upon. Bastion sees no hint of what is to come, but it is once again a day of many gathering places. Trinity, now in contact with the M.L.E. and Dumbledore’s lot via messages exchanged with Lucretia and Monty, uncovers nothing.

Only Marion is in attendance when Voldemort suddenly chooses ten companions and leaves Malfoy Manor. Precious minutes are lost before she can escape the crowds and safely send a Patronus to Trinity, and then another to Salazar.

Not that it matters. None but those chosen Death Eaters have any idea where Voldemort has gone.

This time, it is the M.L.E. who knows what is happening before anyone else.

It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. The Ministry is beginning to empty as junior and senior staff leave for the day, using the public Floos in order to return home. Some of the older staff won’t or can’t handle Floo travel any longer, and so they use the public exit upstairs.

Voldemort and his Death Eaters attack the Ministry workers as they step out onto Downing Street, but it’s the Wizengamot members their spells and curses are really meant for.

* * * *

James Potter never forgets the 24th of July 1975. If pressed, yeah, he’ll tell you he didn’t really pay much attention to that morning, especially since he slept through it. Not even the afternoon was all that remarkable, just Potter family business as usual. Sirius sent him a message by way of their enchanted paper around three o’clock, big block letters next to a dog’s head with sad droopy ears, reporting on how he’s stuck in Grimmauld Place and it’s so fucking _dull_. James would love to send a message back, something to cheer him, but the Marauders discovered when they first figured out enchanted message-sending that everything they try to send to Sirius bounces off of 12 Grimmauld Place’s stubborn-arse wards.

After a dark-haired stranger in a scuffed black leather jacket and denims Apparates _directly into his house_ , though, James pays a lot more attention to everything. “How the hell did you do that?” He stood up at some point, wand pointed, feet planted and ready to possibly hex and run for his life. Nice to know his dad really is teaching James good habits and all, but in the meantime: stranger who Apparated right through the wards!

The man spins towards James, wand clenched in his hand, too, but he doesn’t point it at James. “Where is your grandfather?” he gasps out.

James doesn’t lower his wand, but silver-edged short hair, hazel eyes, familiar features. He’s pretty sure he’s seen this bloke before, even if he doesn’t remember where. “Why should I tell you that?”

“Good lad,” the man says, which is kind of bewildering. “Please at least tell me if Henry is at home. Your grandparents and your parents. Please.”

“Uh—” James stutters, but then Mum rushes into the front parlor where James had been lurking, hoping Remus might’ve been able to pop a message through by Floo.

“Saul!” Mum turns as pale as a ghost, and she’s properly Welsh-pale, so that’s terrifying to witness. “What’s happened?”

“Is Henry _here?_ ” the man Mum called Saul repeats his question, sounding frantic. “Euphemia, please—”

James is sourly wondering why this bloke keeps referring to his grandfather by Henry instead of Harry, like everyone else who’s the least bit sensible, when his grandfather stalks into the room. Granddad is already unbuttoning his shirt sleeve cuffs as if he’s expecting a fight. “Saul? Why are you here?”

“Oh, thank the gods,” Saul whispers. James, relieved that Granddad and Mum both seem to know the bloke, finally lowers his wand while noting that Saul at least understands how to choose decent Muggle threads. Sirius would be drooling over that jacket.

“What’s happened?” Granddad asks. Something about his tone of voice snatches up James’s attention and turns it sideways into fear territory.

“Monty and Elizabetha?” Saul insists, which really doesn’t help with the fear. That just makes it worse.

“Monty’s in Scotland,” Granddad says. James already knows that’s code for meeting with people in Professor Dumbledore’s Order, so that probably means he’s okay. Or it means he’s really _not,_ oh _fuck._ “Elizabetha is meeting with Madams Patil, Spinnet, and Shetty, as she usually does on Thursday afternoons. Tell me what in God’s name is happening, Saul!”

“There has been an attack on the Ministry. In London.” Saul finally seems to take a real breath, but his grip on his wand is still way too tight. “I had to—”

“Downing Street. Oh, no.” Granddad’s eyes turn to hazely steel. “No, I wasn’t in danger, Saul. I still take the Floo whenever I feel as if I’m up to it, and today was a good day. Or at least, it _was_ a good day. How bad is it?”

“I don’t yet know. I came here first.” Saul briefly rubs his eyes. “Now I’m off to find out just how bad it is.”

James’s idiot brain finally catches up. Attack on the Ministry in London. Fucking _Death Eaters_ attacked the Ministry! “You mean Volde—”

“James.” Mum’s voice is like a whipcord snap. “You recall our rules on this matter.”

“Right.” James swallows too hard. His parents are hardline on him having anything to do with the war, and that’s not until after he graduates. They don’t keep it a secret or anything, but listening and talking about the war are vastly different things in the Potter book. “Okay.”

“I’m coming with you,” Granddad says to Saul.

Saul looks horrified. “You’ll absolutely do no such thing!”

“They’re my—I’m one of the lead voices of the opposition, Saul,” Granddad snaps. “I have to be there, or people will panic.”

“People are going to be panicked no matter what you do,” Saul retorts. James stares at the man’s eyes, looks at Granddad, and feels his eyebrows rise. Granddad and Saul, whoever he is, have the exact same color eyes. Weird.

“But,” Saul continues, and he sounds calmer. Thinkier, Sirius would joke. “You’re right. You do need to be there, Henry, but _you_ are not leaving this house.” Saul holds out his hand.

Granddad stares at Saul in angry disbelief. “You cannot be serious.”

“I’m afraid that is the job of the current Black family heir.”

James can’t help it; he lets out a snort of laughter and then feels his face heat. “Sorry.”

Granddad glances at James, but his expression isn’t stern. Then he looks at Saul again. “Just this once. _Only_ the once!”

“I refuse to send you into what may still be a war zone, Henry.”

James suddenly yelps and grabs for the folded piece of paper that was just rudely yanked from his trouser pocket. “Hey! That’s mine, you—” James snaps his mouth shut before Mum catches on to what he was about to say.

Saul gives James the strangest look even as he tucks James’s messaging paper into an inner jacket pocket. “I’m aware of who it belongs to, James Potter. You’ll see a return of your property, but not until after we’ve all sat down and had another conversation on the importance of secrecy.”

James gapes at him, almost missing it when Granddad holds out a single silver hair. “Be careful, you old fool,” Granddad tells Saul.

Saul takes the hair and nods. “Considering who I’m about to become, I’ll be taking no chances at all. I will return as soon as I can, but I suggest you have everyone else come home.”

“I’ve just realized I didn’t hear the door chime,” Mum suddenly says. “James, did you let him in?”

“No!” James is insulted. As if he would ever be that sloppy. “He Apparated directly into the house!”

Granddad gives Saul a curious glance. “How on earth did you manage that?”

Saul is already dropping that single silver hair into a vial full of what has to be Polyjuice. James doesn’t know of any other potion that needs a hair to work, though Remus might.

Lily might know. Or she’d be able to ask Snivellus.

Right. As if Lily Evans will ever give him the time of day.

“That is a very good question, Henry, as I’ve no idea at all,” Saul answers Granddad, and then Disapparates. There isn’t even a crack afterwards, which is so amazing that James almost forgets to be terrified.

“An attack on the Ministry,” Granddad says, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “In broad daylight. In full view of any Muggle who happens to be nearby.”

“Oh, Goddammit,” Mum mutters.

James stares at her in complete surprise. He’s never heard his mother swear before, not in his entire life.

* * * *

Downing Street is a cordoned-off disaster. Ten Downing is utterly inaccessible, even though Salazar expects that all government staff has already been evacuated. He uses the Invisibility Charm until he can approach the Aurors stationed at the cordon in front of the Ministry. The police tape blocking access is real enough, but the Aurors haven’t quite gotten their uniforms correct. It will pass a distant inspection, but any reporter who chooses to zoom in with a camera and snap a photograph is going to be hunting for secret government police who don’t exist.

A Disillusionment Charm is blurring everything roped off by the tape and folding, flashing warning signs. He can see only rubble, but given the grim faces of the Aurors, the charm is masking the presence of bodies.

“Let me pass, Auror Robards,” Salazar says to the very young man standing with his slightly older training partner.

“I—er—I’m sorry, Mister Potter. I can’t—I can’t let you—”

Salazar sighs with no artifice needed. Henry would feel much the same. “Auror Robards, I am a member of the Wizengamot, and rumor is already circulating that my fellows were targeted by _him._ I need to know what happened. Please let me pass.” He hesitates. “Fetch Head Auror Scrimgeour, if you feel it necessary. I will wait.”

Robards glances at his partner, an Auror Salazar has seen before but does not yet know by name. “I’ll do that. Please wait here,” Robards says before darting off into the chaos beyond the cordon.

Salazar watches him go, amused by his own acting. He still struggles to pronounce _Harry,_ yet mimicking Henry’s speech patterns and accent is no trouble at all.

To distract himself, he asks the other Auror, “Is it very bad, Auror…?”

“Auror Proudfoot, sir. John Proudfoot,” Robards’ mentor replies. “And…” Proudfoot’s expression is a brief expression of fright and misery. “Yes, sir. It’s very bad. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to see it, were I you.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I must. I don’t yet know what has become of…certain individuals.”

“Understood, sir.”

Robards returns with Rufus Scrimgeour, who scowls when he sees who he believes to be Henry Potter. “This is really no place for you right now, Harry.”

“Is there still a danger, Rufus?”

Rufus frowns, already giving in to what he sees as the inevitable. “Not unless you trip over the rubble. Let him pass, Proudfoot. Robards, rejoin Proudfoot on duty. We can’t let—I don’t know what sort of cover story we’re to come up with this time, but we can’t let the Muggles see how bad it really is.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rufus escorts Salazar to the edge of the rubble, which is where the influence of the massive casting of the Disillusionment Charm ends. “Bloody hell,” Salazar mutters. His eyes can’t settle on any one thing, there is so much to distract. Blood. Dust-covered limbs protruding from rubble. At least one set of staring eyes, a victim of the Killing Curse. “Who did we lose, Rufus?”

“We don’t really know that yet, Harry,” Rufus says, crossing his arms.

Salazar has known this man for years. That was aversion, not the truth. “Rufus: I’m not much fond of visiting this magical disaster.”

Rufus jerks, startled, and then glares at Salazar. “Oh, Merlin. Fine. Which of you is it?”

“It’s Saul, Rufus,” Salazar answers. Rufus’s tensing shoulders relax, though not by much. “Henry is aware that I’m borrowing, never fear. He feels strongly that he needs to be seen here, and I feel strongly that I’ll not see him die needlessly.”

“Good on you, then, for making the stubborn old goat stay put,” Rufus mutters. “Voldemort and ten Death Eaters launched an assault when everyone began to leave the Ministry for the day. I know of at least sixteen deaths so far, and yes, some of them are on the Wizengamot.”

“Fuck,” Salazar says under his breath.

Rufus glares at him. “Exactly that! You couldn’t warn us?”

“There was absolutely no chance. I sent a Patronus to you the moment I learned from the Underground that Voldemort had departed the manor, but he told no one where he was going.”

“Your Patronus certainly made it so my Aurors were up and ready to fight, and probably did so with soiled pants, to boot,” Rufus says grimly. “A bloody Gorgon. Great Merlin, some days I hate you.”

Salazar decides he’ll spare Rufus the indignity of needing to admit or deny that he also needed a fresh pair of pants. “Did it help?”

Rufus hesitates. “Much as I’m still sore that we didn’t have better warning…yes. I think it would be so much worse if I hadn’t sent Aurors topside to make certain Voldemort hadn’t come here. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I’d rather it had been the warning these people deserved, not the least we could manage.” Salazar glances around, waiting until forensics wizards from the M.L.E. rush by, followed closely by one of several teams of healers from St. Mungo’s. “Who did we lose from the Wizengamot? Henry will wish to know.”

“For certain?” Rufus leans on his cane, and it’s no casual gesture. The man is tired, and his leg is not faring well. “Christopher Bainbridge. I don’t know which of his sons will take the family Wizengamot seat, but I doubt they’ll be neutral after that bloody bastard murdered their father.”

“That isn’t likely, no,” Salazar agrees, making certain his vocal patterns are a match to Henry’s again. “Please, keep going. I want to know the first part of how much worse it may yet become.”

“Giorgio Zabini. Edgar Harper.” Rufus pulls an irritable face. “Summanus Carrow, though I’d say his death was not intended. That one’s been supporting Voldemort from the start.”

“He did, yes, but…” Salazar gives up and casts a privacy charm. “Dorcas Carrow is the one who chose to bear Voldemort’s Mark, and he wanted the family seat. I don’t know if he participated in the attack, but it would be no surprise to me if Dorcas Carrow murdered his own father to get what he wished for.”

“Voldemort’s getting rid of the chaff, solidifying the ranks.” Rufus’s grip on his cane tightens. “We’re about to be overrun, aren’t we?”

Salazar glances around at the devastation again. A team of healers and Aurors working together have just pulled a new body from the stone and masonry that fell onto the street during the attack. When one of the healers moves to one side to gain a better grip, Salazar recognizes Larunda Figg, the family matriarch, by the mourning veil and jewelry she always attached to her long fall of silvery-pink hair.

“We were overrun in January. I hope you’re not overly fond of sleeping, as I don’t think either of us are going to see much of it for quite a while.”

Rufus shakes his head and then spits on the ground. “God take it, I see Jenkins. You’d best be on home, Harry, or you’ll be trapped in an unpleasant conversation with a twit.”

Salazar locks eyes with Jenkins, and then makes his—and Henry’s—opinion known by deliberately turning away. “Thank you for the warning. I’ll do everything I can, Rufus.”

Rufus sounds as if all the exhaustion of war has just landed upon his head. “I know you will.”

Salazar waits until late that evening before he returns to the Potter manor. Henry and Elizabetha are waiting up for him. Monty passed out in the armchair, while Euphemia retired early, if only to keep James from sneaking back downstairs. “The _Evening Prophet_ didn’t sugarcoat it.”

“No. It was easy to realize that this time, I don’t think they dared,” Henry agrees. “There is a list of the known deceased. The count stands at thirty-two, including the four Wizengamot fatalities.”

“Fuck.” Salazar tilts his head back to stare up at the parlor ceiling. “I’ve been conferring with the others this evening. Given what was overheard, before and after the attack, we think Voldemort is deliberately pushing for the Ministry to declare war. He’ll use it as a political tool, twist events so that it’s seen by the undecided amongst the Pure-bloods as if the Ministry of Magic is attacking Pure-bloods with impunity.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Elizabetha says flatly.

“But Voldemort excels at such trickery,” Salazar replies. He reaches into his jacket and retrieves the charmed paper he stole that afternoon from James when he noticed how many communication charm variants were embedded in it. “This is a brilliant messaging system. If the four of you can convince James to share the method by which it was created, it’s a tool the M.L.E. and others could use.”

“James realized who you had to be,” Elizabetha says, giving Salazar a brief smile of forgiveness. “Why did you come here, knowing James was home for the summer?”

“I panicked,” Salazar admits. “I know that Henry does not always use the Floo, and…”

Elizabetha nods. “We understand. I would likely done the same. We are still deciding how to make certain James keeps quiet about your continued existence, but that is our difficulty, not yours.”

Henry unfolds the flat paper, which appears to be blank. “This certainly holds enough magic to be capable of something powerful.” He folds it again and tucks it beneath his arm. “Voldemort is going to get exactly what he asked for. I’ve been in talks all evening by way of messenger birds and Patroni. You should expect the month to end with a political shift within the Ministry. Some of Voldemort’s allies didn’t appreciate the opportunity to become collateral damage at the hands of the man they thought to follow.”

Salazar tries not to grimace. “Will it do any good?”

“Honestly?” Henry and Elizabetha share a long look that speaks of many shared late nights, and none of them of late have been for the pleasure of it. “I’ve no idea, Sal. None at all.”

It takes another six days, but by Ministry standards, Wizarding Britain’s government is traveling at lightspeed. The morning newspaper on 30th July announces yesterday’s sacking of Eugenia Jenkins as Minster for Magic. She’s been replaced by the current holder of the Bagnold seat, Millicent Bagnold, a Half-blood by way of her mother. Despite her blood status, she’s considered a good politician by many, not quite a moderate, but not someone Dumbledore would believe to be useful to him, either. She’ll have her own opinions, which she must’ve stated before the emergency election, as she only won her new position as Minister for Magic by a single vote.

Also of interest is that the Wizengamot is recognizing Albus Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix as an official body of resistance against Voldemort. The group has been given no power other than a bit of political clout granted by that acknowledgement, but he imagines Albus Dumbledore will use every single bit of that power to immediate use. Salazar hopes it’s all devoted to ending the war, but it’s only 1975. They’ve six years and some months to go before that time.

The next day, Salazar is present under Multa Facies Sucus to listen as the new minister gives her first public speech. Considering Wizarding Britain’s fearful state of affairs, it’s a bold move to make.

“Today I am making it clear to all of you gathered here, and to all of Wizarding Britain: the so-called Dark Lord Voldemort is an enemy of the people, and of this Ministry. He is a scourge on the whole of Britain for his war against Muggle-borns and Muggles alike, and for the Pure-bloods and Half-bloods he kills without concern or hesitation. Anyone who acts in support of Voldemort and the Knights of Walpurgis, now known as Death Eaters, will be considered just as guilty as those who began this war, and swiftly consigned to Azkaban. That is the fate awaiting all Death Eaters, along with their Dark Lord Voldemort.

“Wizarding Britain is officially at war.”

[1] Castilian: “Oh, pedophile. I am so much older than you can imagine…”


	17. Wish You Were Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allegiences are funny things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flail reader's credit to @norcumii, who is still putting up with me for Reasons, or something. <3
> 
> I'm in a mood from being in pain and other reasons and can't much do anything about it (so far), so have a chapter!
> 
> NOTE: This chapter includes the use of a still-living real person in a fictional, respectful manner for the time period, though he has recently done a runner for Not-Great Reasons.

Severus Snape wisely made certain that he and Lily ordered all of their school supplies by Owl Post after the Ministry finally removed their heads from their arses and recognized the stupid war. Petunia would have lost her stupid twit mind if an owl had shown up for Lily loaded down with “freak” things. It’s seemed wiser to keep what’s left of the peace, at least for the rest of the summer holiday. That dinner he and Lily were forced to share with Vernon Dursley is still a recent, vivid, _unwanted_ memory.

“I really hate that I’m asking this, but what the fuck does Petunia see in that overbearing prick?”

Lily looks up from where she’s sorting ingredients for Potions. She’s one of the only other students Severus knows of who is properly particular with what she’ll put in a cauldron. Their fifth year begins in a week, and for the first time, Severus isn’t in a hurry to go back. Dealing with the Pure-bloods in Slytherin House is going to be worse than ever. The lines are going to be drawn, and Severus isn’t from a family who can afford to lurk in what’s left of a fading neutral zone.

Severus is so fucked. So, he distracts himself by asking Lily about Petunia’s God-awful taste.

“I really don’t know, Sev. He’s…” Lily shudders. “Vernon Dursley creeps me out. I don’t think he’d ever try to, y’know, do anything. I’d hex his bollocks off if he tried, anyway. It’s just…he really does have little beady piggy eyes, doesn’t he?”

“He sort of does, yeah,” Severus agrees, grimacing at the thought. Seventh-year Death Eaters have looked at him with less loathing than Vernon Dursley. “I mean, Petunia is still in school, and he’s, what, five years older than she is?”

“Six years,” Lily corrects him, properly re-wrapping a bicorn horn so it won’t break apart in her kit.

“A twenty-three-year-old man is dating a seventeen-year-old student.” Severus is now just as creeped out as Lily. “Don’t your parents think that’s, you know…not okay?”

“Of course they do, but Petunia hasn’t listened to them about anything since I got my bloody Hogwarts letter!” Lily exclaims in frustration. “I think Mum and Dad believed that if they welcomed Vernon properly, Petunia would maybe…I don’t know. Be less…just…less! But she hasn’t been. Petunia’s just so awful, Severus. Nattering on about how Vernon is going to propose _like a normal person_ after she graduates from St. Mary’s.”

“I’m sorry.” Severus doesn’t know what else to say. He doesn’t quite dare reach out, either. Severus and Lily haven’t really touched like they used to, no easy hugs or hand-holding. It’s not that he wants her to snog her or anything—wrong gender, for starters—but he misses it. It feels like they’re not as close as they were before, and he’s scared that the war is going to ruin everything. “Want to listen to ‘White Rabbit’ again? It always cheers you up.”

“I’ll get it. I’m closer, anyway,” Lily says, rolling away from her Potions kit and crawling over to Severus’s turntable. “Besides, you like it, too.”

Severus lets the familiar bass line wash over him when the song begins to play. “Yeah, I do. Still hate the book, though.”

Lily frowns at him. “If you hate _Alice in Wonderland,_ why do you like this song so much?”

“Because it sounds like they understand.”

“Understand what?” Lily asks.

Severus tilts his head so that his hair hides his face. “That once you go down the rabbit hole, there’s no going back.”

When they return to Hogwarts on the train, they share a compartment, as they always have, though it has to wait until after Lily endures a “drop-dead dull Prefect meeting.” Ravenclaw and new Prefect Octavian Burke joins them, though, which is irritating. Burke is too willing to hang out with Potter to be entirely sensible, even if he doesn’t act like a shit to Severus or Lily. Honestly, Severus doesn’t even think Burke has ever noticed that Lily is a Muggle-born.

Their other unwanted companion this year is Richard Rothschild, one of Lily’s friends among the Ravenclaws. His older sister Iola had been in Slytherin before she graduated; Severus respected Iola for being one of the few Slytherins he’d known that year who wasn’t a complete tit.

He still has no idea how Iola and Richard Rothschild are related to the other magical English Rothschilds, not when the head of the Rothschild family won’t acknowledge their existence. Iola and Richard both said that they’re Pure-bloods, the children of a Trader witch from Bristol. Severus doesn’t know about Iola, but Richard is staunchly _not_ the Death Eater type. That means Severus has to put up with Richard’s occasional suspicious looks the entire fucking way to Hogwarts, but at least the Ravenclaw keeps his mouth shut.

The Sorting is…odd. Severus ends up feeling so disquieted by the Hat’s song about divisions and conflict that he forgets to clap to welcome the new Slytherins. Regulus Black isn’t very happy, either.

“Yeah, great. Remind me that my family is split in half and my brother’s on the wrong side of the line. Thanks for that, you stupid hat,” Regulus mutters.

“It…” Severus trails off. He wants to say that it’ll get better, but it won’t. It will probably get worse. “You still have Narcissa?”

Regulus rolls his eyes. “You do recall that Narcissa is an icicle, right?”

“Honestly, I was so busy trying to avoid Lucius Malfoy’s droning that Narcissa was pleasant in comparison.”

“Ugh. Stop helping, Severus. Just—stop.”

Before the new term began, Severus ventured into London on his own to visit another record shop, a better shop with clerks who aren’t raging dickheads. He paid in advance for a copy of Pink Floyd’s next album, including the money to have it shipped to Hogwarts after its release. The album doesn’t arrive by Owl Post until the 20th, but Severus doesn’t open it yet. He’s barely seen Lily since they got to Hogwarts, thanks to it being their stupid O.W.L. year. He’s going to fix that at least once before Hallowe’en, and hopefully again before the winter holidays. Severus has to show Lily, somehow, that he’s not on the side of the line her Gryffindor friends are insisting he _must_ be on.

His best friend is a Muggle-born. You’d think that would be an obvious hint that he’s not a fucking Death Eater!

The first Hogsmeade Weekend isn’t until the 25th and 26th of October. Severus is all but ready to scream with impatience in the meantime. Even lessons in Latin from Nizar’s portrait aren’t enough to distract him this term, though at least that is going better than his miserable failure at Spanish.

The Marauders are more brash, more blatant, more boisterous—more _annoying_ this term. They’re up to something, too. Despite both Madam Pomfrey and Dumbledore’s statements of sympathy regarding Lupin’s recurring “illness,” Lupin is never in the hospital wing.

“I dunno. It happens so often that Remus probably stays in his dorm until he feels better,” Lily says when Severus mutters about it as they climb the stairs.

“Those idiot self-declared Marauders have been leaving the castle every time Lupin’s been ill this term. Who would leave their friend behind when he’s supposed to be sick?”

Lily shrugs. “It isn’t like they haven’t proved that they’re thoughtless arseholes, Severus.”

“True,” Severus says, but he can’t let it go. It’s gnawing at him, the timing of it all.

It’s the moon. That damned full moon. There are a multitude of things a wizard can get up to on the full moon, and a lot of them can get everyone else into a load of shit.

Severus sometimes thinks it might be lycanthropy before dismissing the idea as ludicrous. Werewolves aren’t allowed at Hogwarts. They’re _dangerous_.

Lily gives the portrait hanging on the wall a password that Severus memorizes out of habit, and then she pushes open the door to Gryffindor’s empty Common Room. Lily claimed that it was warmer as well as deserted, and she’s right on both counts.

Severus gets his first look at the Gryffindor Common Room’s scarlet and gold glory. It’s not bad, really. Two different hearths host cheerful burning fires. The room has lots of overhead lighting, and bright autumn sunshine floods into the room from two massive windows.

Lily grins and bounces in place when Severus finally reveals the album he’s been teasing her about since it arrived in the post. “Pink Floyd! I didn’t know they were putting out another album this year!”

“I noticed the poster in the record shop when we were getting _Surrealistic Pillow,_ ” Severus says, smiling. Maybe they can survive this year. Then it’s just two more to go, and the Houses won’t matter anymore. Magical uni doesn’t give a shit about Houses, and he knows they could both go on scholarship. He can brew potions in his sleep, and Lily holds sway over Charms.

They listen to the album on the Common Room’s Charmed gramophone, lying on the floor with their heads close but bodies apart in a floppy T-junction. Severus loves “Wish You Were Here,” the album’s title track. Lily thinks it’s depressing, and she _hates_ depressing songs, especially right now. Severus admits he can’t really blame her for that. Then Lily declares she loves “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” all eight parts of it. She says that it reminds her of Severus.

Severus reads the liner notes for the song and gives her a baffled look. “It sounds like the song’s about someone mental, Lily.”

“No.” Lily stares up at the ceiling, a thoughtful look on her face. “It’s supposed to be encouraging. Shining on, I mean. It sounds like they’re telling someone not to give up.”

“I’m not giving up,” Severus mutters. They’re back to this already. Dammit.

“You’ve got some interesting friends, then.”

Severus sits up and bites his lip. He’s told her this before. It has to stick eventually. “It’s not…it’s—it’s politics, Lily.” Good; at least he won’t completely stutter his way through this explanation. Strong emotion often leaves him sputtering like a buffoon, but he’s been thinking about this particular Lily-Translation problem for a long time. “I’m a Half-blood in a House that’s supposed to be nothing but Pure-bloods. Gryffindors have different politics to worry about.”

Lily sticks out her lower lip in a petulant frown. “There aren’t any politics in Gryffindor. This is just school, Sev.”

“There are politics _everywhere_ ,” Severus says, but he can tell she doesn’t understand. Worse, he doesn’t know how to make her. Not…not literally, but—

Shit. Even in his own head, Severus doesn’t have the right words.

* * * *

On the Autumnal Equinox, Salazar nearly suffers bloody heart failure. He is doing nothing more than wandering past one of the many record shops in London, his mind occupied by the Death Eater meeting he’d just spied upon in the Alley, when the strains of his brother’s oft-played melody strike his ears and pluck his nerves with icy fingers.

Salazar braces himself against the nearest lamp post, ignoring curious passersby as he calms his ancient heart and learns to breathe again. He knew, in theory, that the melody Nizar recalled must be from his time, but Salazar hadn’t expected the song to slap him in the bloody face!

Once he can breathe, walk, and think all at the same time again, Salazar enters the shop. That song, _that fucking song_ , is being played at full volume—and it has words. It has words that are going to haunt Salazar for the rest of his life.

Salazar buys the latest Pink Floyd album, _Wish You Were Here_ , ignoring his shaking hands as he accepts a handful of change from a pleasant clerk minding this particular shop’s till. The album’s cover art is of one man shaking hands with another, who seems ignorant of the fact that he’s on fire.

 _Deals with the devil,_ Salazar thinks, noting the studio filming lot acting as the backdrop. He wonders if such a thing is worse than making a deal with Death themself. Then he goes home and puts the record on the turntable before warning Nizar’s portrait of what he’s about to hear.

It’s a bit easier to cope with, this time. Salazar instead focuses on the novelty that he’s listening to a brand-new song that he’s been playing on various stringed instruments for nearly one thousand years. Even if he had known the words from the start, he still wouldn’t have guessed which band would create this song. It’s Pink Floyd’s sound just as much as it is _not_.

Salazar lifts the needle from the album after the song is finished, troubled when Nizar’s portrait is silent. He turns around to find his brother staring at the turntable, an unfathomable expression on his face. “What is it?”

Nizar blinks a few times and meets his eyes. “Can you—can you manage to capture a recording of Lily Evans’ voice?”

“Oh,” Salazar whispers.

“Yeah.” Nizar’s portrait scrubs at his youthful face and sighs. “It’s like…this really faint echo in my head. I think it’s always been her.”

Salazar is back to strumming the melody on a lute he brings out of storage, realizing over the years that he’s lost some of the proper notes. He now owns the actual bloody song to compare to, and it isn’t long before he has the whole of it in his head once more.

He takes that song, that memory of Nizar’s mother granting him a melody from 1975, as a sign that something in 1981 will go right.

Martin brings in a new member to the Underground in October, one he introduces to Trinity but not Salazar. That is as it should be, even if it sometimes makes Salazar itch not to know. He likes secrets; he likes _knowing_ secrets. Shortly afterward, Bastion has also brought someone in. Trinity calls them Richard Burke, but also seems to find them baffling.

“Why?”

“Oh. Because they’re supposed to be dead,” Trinity says, chewing on the end of a bic while sorting through her notes. “I’m glad they’re not, but it was still…I’m selfish enough to want someone from my family to turn up alive, Saul.”

“And I still don’t blame you for that,” Salazar tells her. “Martin’s find doesn’t have a second identity?”

“Martin sounds like he doesn’t want to frighten them off,” Trinity replies. “He says she’s never had anything to do with Muggles before in her life.”

That doesn’t seem auspicious to Salazar, but Martin’s new find must be close to the Inner Circle, or stand within it. On Hallowe’en, that enables Trinity to send Salazar a Patronus that is shouting at him about Voldemort’s yearly tradition and Hogsmeade.

Salazar freezes in place before he sends a Patronus to Rufus, then to Lucretia, and tells them to warn Dumbledore’s Order, as well. He’d make the attempt himself, but there is no time. Most of that lot would take the appearance of a Gorgon Patronus as impending treachery, anyway.

The M.L.E., backed by a Ministry that finally believes in the war, arrives in Hogsmeade in force. It isn’t enough, but then Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix joins them. Together, they prevent what would have been the slaughter of every Muggle-born who has ever dared to take up residence in the village. Instead of a massacre, the battle is afterwards referred to as the Hogsmeade Skirmish.

“Skirmish,” Monty says snidely, leaning back in his chair with a warm compress over his eyes. “Fuck the lot of them with a sodding dictionary.”

Salazar raises his glass in salute for a man who can’t currently see it; Monty has a steaming towel draped over his face as he tries to rid himself of a migraine caused by magical exhaustion. “May it be a very large dictionary, then.”

It’s a success, though. A victory. Wizarding Britain needed a rallying point, and Voldemort accidentally gave them one.

The M.L.E. loses three Aurors to the battle. The Death Eaters lose two of their own. Salazar thinks it an unbalanced trade until he sees the names of those Voldemort can no longer call his own. Miranda Burke Selwyn was one, the mother of four Death Eaters named Allenford Selwyn Junior, Madlyn Selwyn Greengrass, Hector Selwyn, and Impatience Selwyn; she was killed by Auror Alastor Moody. Her husband, Allenford Senior, vows revenge, but that’s not likely to happen. Allenford Senior is not competent with a wand, nor is he that intelligent. Miranda Selwyn’s children aren’t interested in revenge at all, but they’re a cold lot in the best of circumstances. Their aunt, Augusta Longbottom, would very much like to remind the idiots that the infamous Burke chill is not meant to be a lifetime devotion.

Octavian Montague is Voldemort’s other loss, a vital one. Harfang Longbottom takes grim credit on public record for Octavian’s death. Not even the actual Death Eaters on the Wizengamot, including William Montague himself, speak of arrests or investigations. They’re all Pure-bloods; they understand the need for familial revenge.

Martin still believes that it was his wand that caused Robert Longbottom’s death, but Salazar has reviewed his memories of that day in the Potter family Pensieve several times, and he no longer thinks so. Salazar isn’t certain that Montague was the real culprit, either, but he knows exactly what Martin’s wand looks like. His only use of the Killing Curse on 1st September 1971 hit no one.

The victory grants another of Voldemort’s followers the bravery they need to realize that escape might be possible, after all. Salazar knew that Lucretia Fleet Lestrange, Patrician’s wife, was fearful, but by November of 1975, she is both terrified and absolutely done with feeling that way. “I gave birth to _monsters,_ ” Lucretia spits bitterly. “My twin boys. I was so proud of them, once. So proud I’d given my husband two Heirs, two sons! And now it’s…” She lets out a choked sob and quickly waves off any hint of sympathy. “Damn Patrician for twisting them. Damn all three of them for treating me as if I’m some disposable toy!”

Trinity looks alarmed. “Rabastan and Rodolphus—have they…touched you?”

Lucretia’s response is a strained smile. “You truly don’t wish to know.”

Much like Martin’s October find of a spy, Lucretia refuses a secondary Muggle identity that would grant her the means to retreat to a place of safety when needed. Perhaps Salazar should have taken that as yet another ill portent.

Salazar is still trying to find the Death Eater who is murdering innocents to fuel a spell harsh enough to break ancient wards, but so far, no one feels the need to brag of their skill. Without that option, Salazar settles for the next best thing—finding a way to counter it.

“Breaking ancient familial wards? That would require a great deal of power. Most of them were probably blood wards to begin with, built and tied into the family bloodline at the start.” Nizar’s portrait is sitting on his ceiling, resting his chin on the hand he props up with his knee. “I dunno. That is and _isn’t blood magic, Sal._ ”

“You just started hissing again,” Salazar tells him, and listens to a great deal of swearing in Parseltongue. “I’m still looking, little brother.”

“ _I know. It’s just complete shit that this would happen_ now _,_ ” Nizar hisses in irritation. “ _But you were asking about messy murder for breaking wards, and about ways to counter it. I’d tell anyone who will listen to bleed on the origination point for their house wards. By strengthening their ties to the original magic, they’ll strengthen the wards. Magic will be more interested in protecting the people who are paying proper attention to it._ ”

Salazar groans aloud. “ _Hermanito_ , it would be easier to convince Voldemort to put down his wand and take up knitting.”

“ _I didn’t say it would be easy, especially since Wizarding Britain is full of idiots who think Blood Magic is evil. Worse, that blood-strengthening isn’t even a guarantee that it would work. Murder is such a brutal act, Sal, but it’s also a powerful one. That’s why it grants people fucking Horcruxes._ ”

Salazar is in Lambeth visiting Trinity in her home, introducing her to Norman Greenbaum’s music, when she unexpectedly hands him a folded pamphlet. “What is this?”

Trinity looks smug. “A possible solution to your problem with a hissing portrait.”

“ _The Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation_ ,” Salazar reads. The flyer is printed and folded properly, but the ink making up each letter is not crisp, but look as if they’ve been formed from static. “This doesn’t look like a loose-leaf copy.”

“Oh, now who’s behind on Muggle doings?” Trinity taunts him, grinning. “It’s a xerographic print. Electronic, cheap, and becoming commonplace, even if the quality isn’t yet as nice as something you’d get with magic.”

Salazar resists the urge to swear in frustration. He needs to spend more time in London for exactly that sort of reason, but the Underground is still _too few_. “If this flyer represents what I think it to be, then such is long overdue.”

“It is,” Trinity agrees, “in both Wizarding and Muggle Britain. Wizarding Britain doesn’t treat a physical disability as a mental one, but Muggle Britain is still in the habit of the latter. Wizarding Britain doesn’t have any interest in improving existing modes of mobility, while Muggle Britain is improving those means fairly often. Neither of them provides for those of us who need those means a way to access most of the bloody world, though!”

“You’re a member of this group, I take it?”

Trinity smiles. “I needed something else to do with my time, and…well, I’ll confess to a bit of selfishness, as I’m now one of those who would benefit by this cause’s success. I was so thoughtless before, Saul. I never once considered that there might be children who should have been in Hogwarts with me who _couldn’t_ be.”

Salazar glances up, brow furrowing. The staircases were designed to compensate for those who couldn’t climb them, and would carry one along until they were deposited where they needed to go. It sounds as if that no longer occurs, which is not only unpleasant news, but disturbing. Nothing should have altered that bit of magic. Not unless some group of fools did so deliberately. “I am sorry it was a lesson learned by violent, irreversible means.”

“I’m not. I’m frustrated, but not sorry. I can continue to feel pathetically sorry for myself, or I can help make certain that at least for Muggles, things get better. Speaking of which…” Trinity hands him another xerographic-printed flyer. “This is the solution.”

“Sign language.” Salazar raises both eyebrows. “From the examples I’m seeing, they’ve progressed far beyond finger-spelling. I don’t see anything resembling the hand-signing we used in Europe, either.”

“That’s because France and the U.S. have different signs than Britain. Yes, really; global politics and spite mean that we can’t even have a universal sign language,” Trinity says.

Salazar is too old to be surprised by that _._ “This, though—this is useful.” It even has a place where classes are being taught, for free, to help those who are unable to hear or speak but cannot afford private schooling or tutoring. “I’ve no time to attend such a class, though.”

“One of our members with a bit more wealth behind them, even if they’re quiet about it, says they’re going to record the classes onto what they’re calling a video cassette.” Trinity pulls a face. “I’m assuming there will eventually be some way to watch it without broadcasting it on the television. I hope they mean a visual recording, at least. I’m not certain what a sound recording of a silent class could ever hope to accomplish.”

“Please let me know the moment this member has the means to make copies of these recordings, and if they speak of a way to watch them at home.” Salazar still has no idea _when_ he’ll have time to learn another language, but he has to find it. The degradation of his brother’s portrait’s ability to speak in other languages is getting worse.

“I’ve included the class times, anyway. Just in case,” Trinity says. “I don’t think you should lose the means to speak with your family, even if all you have left of them is a portrait.”

Salazar reaches out and grips her hand. She holds on tight, lips pressed together in a thin line of grief that will not fade. “Thank you.”

“Besides, I’ll be learning it, too,” Trinity adds. “Martin already knows this language; he says he learned it, of all places, within the Slytherin Common Room. He also said that he wasn’t the only one to do so. They use it to speak to the Merpeople.”

Salazar immediately discards the idea of using these signs among dangerous company. “That is interesting. I wonder who taught the first of them?”

“Martin had no idea. Desdemona had at least heard of it, but never learned it for herself.”

Desdemona still resides in the Dunbar manor, and insists upon using her own name when safely at home. Given that she has full control over the wards, any potential monitoring spells, and lives alone, Salazar doesn’t mind dropping the habit of Monica for a brief time. He is visiting her there on 22nd November to finalize their appearances and placements in Voldemort’s next gathering when Nerys catches up with him.

“Please do not be bad news,” Salazar mutters as he collects the letter from Euphemia’s owl. “I don’t think I can handle more bad news this year.”

_Sal,_

_I thought that you would like to know, given who the baby is named after. Robert and Alice Morgan had their second child. Another boy. (It really does seem like mixing in Half-blood and Muggle-born blood improves childbearing in witches, to my vexation. It’s a bit too late for me to tell off my ancestors.)_

_They named him John Franklin Morgan II, after his grandfather._

“Good news, then?” Desdemona asks after he lowers the missive.

Salazar nods. “A birth, not a death. A boy who was named for a friend who died during the European wars. John Morgan II is a great-grandchild of Iola Black.”

Desdemona looks surprised. “I hadn’t realized she maintained a presence in Wizarding Britain after that infamous split from the family, when Lycorus Black’s widow, Magenta, declared Iola to be disowned and disinherited for marrying a Muggle.”

“The foul part of that family would love for everyone to believe that, but Iola wasn’t the sort to bow to foolish whims. She and her Muggle husband, Robert Hitchens, resided in Winchester until their deaths. They had two children, both Half-bloods. Their son Robert married Amber Rothschild—”

Desdemona lets out a loud, startled laugh. “Oh, that must drive Obsidian to utter madness! He loses his temper if anyone so much as breathes a word about his older sister! Is she still alive?”

Salazar shakes his head. Obsidian’s gloating in regards to his sister’s death was oft annoying, but Amber Hitchens prepared her revenge in advance. “She died in 1974, but by then, Amber was the eldest surviving Rothschild. She took the granted opportunity to inform her grandchildren that they had the legal right to re-take the Rothschild name, if they wished. If you’ve puzzled over the origins of the siblings Iola and Richard Rothschild…”

“I had, a bit, as Obsidian refuses to acknowledge their existence.” Desdemona cackles again. “Iola is even named for her grandmother!”

“Her great-grandmother, yes.”

“Excellent,” Desdemona declares. “I suppose Robert Hitchens the younger had a sister?”

“Robert Junior is still alive. If it were not for his current frailty, I’ve no doubt he would be fighting in this war. His sister was Ella Hitchens, wed to John Morgan. She died in 1973, but he died in Germany. 1943.” Salazar manages a smile, though he still recalls every single loss from those days with a heavy heart. “Lysandra Yaxley Black was another one of ours. She died in Luxembourg in 1942. We didn’t even know that it was Arcturus Black II’s wife who spied with us until well after her death.”

“I didn’t even know her to be a war hero,” Desdemona says in surprise. “There is so much I’ve realized of late that I don’t know about my fellow Pure-bloods, much less the rest of Wizarding Britain, or even of Muggle life. I did often wonder why Cedrella was so upset during the last year of the European Wizarding War. I thought it was because Septimus Weasley had gone off to the Continent, and because of her pregnancy, not a deep-seated Black family need for revenge.”

“Charis would have supported Grindelwald if given half the chance, but Callidora and Cedrella might’ve ended the war themselves if given the opportunity—” Salazar breaks off when he realizes there is a strange ringing in his head. It resembles the ringing in his ears following those times when he has been far too close to an explosion.

“Saul?”

What in gods’ name is that? He shouldn’t be hearing any such thing. It isn’t the earth. There is no hint of a fire anywhere on the planet that he can sense, so it isn’t a nuclear explosion.

“SAL!”

Salazar blinks several times and looks at her. It isn’t a new sensation. His head is ringing from the _lack_ of one. “Something has changed.”

Desdemona stares at him. “What? I’ve never seen you like this before!”

“I think…no. I’ll not say a word until I confirm it. I need to go to Spain. Send a Patronus if an emergency occurs, but I should return in a day or so.” Salazar Apparates to the southern coast without waiting for an answer, startling a pair of late-season beachcombers. “My apologies,” he says to them, and Disapparates. He hopes they don’t speak of his appearance and departure, if only so that the Ministry will leave them the bloody hell alone.

The moment he arrives on his father’s lands, he knows. He still needs to see it with his own eyes, but there is no mistaking that sensation. What _else_ has he missed while being so preoccupied with Voldemort’s stupid fucking war?

Salazar Apparates to Burgos to find a city crowded to the brim with spectators. Still he does not find what he seeks, and this time listens to what his magic has to say. There. Madrid.

Madrid is just as crowded, especially the stairs and walkways before the Palacio de las Cortes. A trim man in a military uniform and sash is just emerging from the palace, whereupon the noise from those around Salazar increases dramatically. A woman is at his side, wearing a dress cut to modern fashion standards, but there is no mistaking that she is royalty. Three young children with them are being closely guarded.

Despite the presence of the military, someone nearby is brave enough to shout, “ _¡El dictador ha muerto! ¡Viva nuestro amado rey!_ ”[1] That he is not immediately accosted and arrested is almost distracting enough that Salazar nearly misses the import of the first sentence.

Franco is dead. Juan Carlos, his named successor, is now king.

Salazar can only think of one course of action given the situation. He seeks out the magic that calls to him from a family who is normally to be found in Burgos. They are not related to him by blood, but they’ve no choice but to deal with him.

“Ignacio Algernan Vasques Serrano.”

An elderly, stoop-shouldered wizard with neatly tied grey-blue hair with silver edges turns away from his regard of the palace. There is no hint left to his features to say he is of Basque-Arabic descent, but the old magic is in his blood, nonetheless.

Ignacio’s black eyes widen upon seeing Salazar. “You!”

“Me,” Salazar agrees, smiling as if it hasn’t been nearly fifty years since Ignacio was last forced to endure his company. “I do hope you’re again ready to stand as the Magical Marqués of Burgos.”

“Papá, who is this?” asks the younger man at his side. He could easily serve as a stand-in for Ignacio…were it still 1925.

Ignacio scowls with all his aging might, as if that might be enough to drive Salazar away. “This, Augusto, is the family curse.”

Salazar grins. If that is the way it is to be, he may as well enjoy it. “That I am.”

He is not able to see Juan Carlos until very late that evening. It is not the difficulty of getting past the throngs of those who are celebrating a returned king, though he suspects most do not yet understand the significance. The security officers are no trouble at all; they do not even notice Salazar’s passage. It’s the impatience of waiting for a new queen and three new _infantes_ to sleep. They have never met Salazar, and for now, it is safer that way.

The new king is not sleeping. He is sipping on a glass of wine and staring out of a window in the sitting room that precedes the closed doors to his bedroom. His military uniform was no mere formality; even at rest, his shoulders and back maintain an officer’s bearing.

“Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón. It has been a _very_ long time.”

Juan Carlos whirls around, hand reaching for a weapon he is not carrying. “Who are you? How did you get into this room?”

“Am I not memorable? The Marqués of Burgos certainly thought I was.”

Juan Carlos frowns. “There is no such position in Burgos.”

“There was before. There must be again,” Salazar counters.

The young king turns on a second lamp and peers at him. “Salazar Deslizarse. I do recall you now. My father introduced us when I was still young, before the end of World War II.”

“That he did. How is the infante Don Juan taking to the idea that you’ve been crowned in his rightful place?” Salazar asks.

Juan Carlos grimaces in such a manner that speaks of one who must hear that question often. “He is displeased, as he has every right to be, but I remind him that Spain is fortunate to see a monarch returned to her at all. My father says he will consider me a rightful heir to his throne when I have proven my worth.”

“He is stubborn, just as all the men of your bloodline have been. I think he is wrong, though. Spain needs youth right now, not age, no matter what wisdom might accompany it.”

Salazar’s new king regards him with a line of thoughtfulness between his brows. “My father was not lying when he said you were Spain’s guardian, a magician who cannot die. Was he?”

“Alas for us all, he was not. Nor is it mere legend that your kingdom has other magical guardians of noble blood and title.”

“That, at least, I am aware of,” Juan Carlos says dryly. “My father made certain I was well-educated in that regard, not wishing me to be surprised to find that magic is not limited to card tricks and manufactured illusions.”

At least Salazar is saved from having to demonstrate that aspect of Spain. It has always before been a draining, irritating process. “Your grandfather’s abdication of the throne has left their standing uncertain for many decades. Those positions must be restored, or properly abolished, though I don’t recommend the latter. There is a magical war occurring in Great Britain at this very moment, and one never knows if it may spill into the Channel to wash ashore in this kingdom.”

“Spain is a republic.”

Salazar tilts his head, hoping that his expression conveys his opinion of that particular notion.

Juan Carlos sighs. “All right, yes, I know. I was declared King of Spain today. Many think that to be a new title for head of state, but they may soon find I’m to be a disappointment in that regard.” He places his glass of wine aside. “Tell me who else holds magical title in Spain, and where I might find them. If there is conflict between Northern Ireland and England paired with a war with others like yourself, I will not leave Spain undefended.”

* * * *

Lily Evans watches her dormmates pack their belongings with the frantic haste of headless chickens. “I told you so,” she says to Mary MacDonald.

Mary flicks her wand at a remaining stack of books. “Laugh it up, swot.”

“I am. Totally laughing.” Lily slips out of bed before Mary can decide the books need to be thrown instead of packed. “See you cats later.”

“UGH!” Josephine declares, but that stuck-up Pure-blooded twit hates anything that even smacks of Muggle, including Lily. That’s part of the reason why Lily gathers up new slang over the summer. To _share._

She’s supposed to be meeting Severus in the courtyard, anyway. It’s a tradition, especially since he always chooses to stay here. Of course, if Lily had his parents, she’d stay in this icicle of a castle over the Christmas holidays, too.

Lily enters the courtyard just in time to find Benedict Mulciber and John Avery Junior with Severus. They’re both standing while he’s slumped on a bench, but when they see Lily, they scowl and leave.

She drops down onto the bench next to Severus, noticing that it’s already been cleared of snow. It’s even warm, but nobody wants to sit on an icy metal bench in December when warming charms exist. “I don’t understand how you can be friends with them.”

Severus doesn’t look up. “I didn’t realize you were friends with Josephine Harper.”

Lily gapes at him. “I’m not! How could you even think that? She’s so—annoying!”

“Well, you seem right convinced that I’m friends with everyone I’m forced to share a dormitory with.”

Lily shuts her mouth with a snap. “That’s not fair.”

“Why? Because it’s me saying it about you instead of you saying it about me?” Severus asks bitterly. He still hasn’t looked up, his hair hiding all of his face from her. She hates that he’s let it grow this long for just that reason.

“What crawled up your arse, anyway?”

“Aside from the fact that you still won’t believe me when I say those two idiots aren’t my friends?” Severus sighs. He’s shaking, and Lily thinks it’s from the cold. She won’t realize how wrong she is until years later, in July 1978. She’ll be trying to survive her first, completely unexpected battle when she realizes that she’s shaking in the exact same way Severus had been in December 1975.

“I do believe you,” Lily says, except her face heats up. That didn’t sound convincing at all, because…

Because she doesn’t believe him. She knows that Avery and Mulciber are going to be Death Eaters when they graduate. They’ve _told_ people, usually when they’re threatening them with how they’re going to kill them after they’re not hiding in Hogwarts any longer. She’s seen Severus hang out with them too many times, and a bunch of other Slytherins who are just as prejudiced, even if they haven’t declared that they’re going to be Death Eaters with the stupidity that Avery and Mulciber admitted it.

“Sure. Yeah.” Severus definitely noticed. Lily hopes this isn’t the last conversation they’re ever going to have, because they’re friends. She’d miss him if he was gone.

She _would._

“Aside from that,” Lily snaps. “You said it was aside from that, so what’s wrong?”

“I feel warm and cherished already,” Severus drawls without lifting his head.

“Sorry,” Lily says, and once again it sounds like she doesn’t mean it. “Really. What’s wrong?”

“Do you remember what I told you on the train platform in 1971?”

Lily blinks a few times, surprised by the change in subject. “That was years ago, Sev.”

“Yeah, it was. Do you remember?”

Lily bites her lip. “You said a lot, and Petunia was distracting. Then your mother dragged you off, so…I’d be guessing, Sev. What did you say?”

“I promised you that I’d never lie to you.” Severus finally lifts his head, his hair swinging back. His eyes are red-rimmed. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, and he seems…angry? “And I never have.”

“Sev, you’ve been spouting things like that ridiculous werewolf theory—”

“Ridiculous—theory—” Severus clenches his jaw shut. Lily feels bad at once; he only stutters when he’s really, really upset. “Y’know, when Potter got me out of that tunnel, I—I thanked him. I hate him, but I st-still thanked him. You tell me that you—you believe Potter saved me. You believe that there’s—there is a tunnel—beneath that stupid Whomping Willow. You believe Potter’s this—this great sodding _hero_.”

“Sodding hero? Not likely,” Lily scoffs, though it was pretty brave of Potter to go help someone he’s been fighting with since they all started school.

Severus stares at her. Whatever he sees makes him draw back. Lily feels cold seeping into her coat, and she’s pretty sure it has nothing to do with the weather. “You believe all that, but you—you’ve never once asked me—” He draws in a shaky breath. “You’ve never asked me what’s—what Potter was saving me _from._ ” Then he gets up and walks away without looking back.

Lily thinks she should run after him. She should. It’s just that Severus has never walked away from her before. Not like this.

This is awful. Lily feels nauseas, like someone dropped a rock into her stomach. A _frozen_ rock, to go with that cold feeling.

Severus is right. Lily didn’t ask. She didn’t even think about what Severus might need to be saved from. The Whomping Willow’s tunnel is underneath the school—from what she’s overheard from the Marauders before they learned privacy charms, the annoying gits, the tunnel is even part of the school! There shouldn’t be anything in that tunnel that would harm a student at all.

Except it was on the full moon. Severus hasn’t uttered the word _werewolf_ at all since then. It’s like he keeps catching himself every time he might be thinking of it, and then he doesn’t.

By the time she’s gathered herself to go stomping after him, Lily can’t find him. Severus has gone back to the Slytherin part of the castle, and Lily has to run and fetch her trunk or she’ll be late to the train.

She doesn’t get to say goodbye that year. She doesn’t yet realize that she never will.

[1] Castilian: “The dictator is dead! Long live our beloved king!”


	18. The Kids Aren't Alright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away  
>  Bells chime, I know I gotta get away  
> And I know if I don't, I'll go out of my mind"_  
>   
> -lyrics from The Who, "The Kids are Alright"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flailed at by the awesome @norcumii. Also, a regular Friday update to go with the early update this week because I finished one of the EVIL TROUBLE CHAPTERS OF WRITING DOOM last night and I'm fuckin' celebrating.

Severus seethes his way through the holidays, Christmas included. He’d much rather avoid everyone on Christmas Day, but Slughorn and Dumbledore both insist that every student in Hogwarts be at Christmas Dinner, the wankers. Slughorn merrily ignores Severus’s every statement of, “I’m Jewish,” like it means nothing. Maybe to someone like Slughorn, it really doesn’t mean anything.

He can’t stop thinking about that last conversation in the courtyard with Lily. There has to be a way to make her understand, but every time he’s tried to talk to her since the bloody werewolf incident has been a stuttering mess, and his latest attempt ended in fucking disaster. He’s afraid they aren’t even friends anymore, and if they’re not, it’s his fault.

“You’re moping,” Nizar says, breaking the silence that’s been lingering between Severus and the portrait for the entire evening. The few other students in Slytherin House who remained for the winter holidays all went to their dormitories an hour ago.

Severus makes himself say it. “She doesn’t believe me.” Not about who his friends are, Lupin being a fucking werewolf, Severus never lying to her—not any of it.

“About what and who?”

“Lily. She doesn’t believe me about—” No, the portrait is aware of Severus’s opinion of people like Mulciber. If Severus would call anyone in Slytherin House a friend, it’s those like Regulus Black, who are intelligent, loyal, and _not bloody stupid._ “She doesn’t believe me about Lupin being a werewolf. She thinks I should be _grateful_ to Potter.”

Nizar shocks him by saying, “You should.”

“ _What?_ ” Severus glares at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“Not for anything else!” The portrait rolls his eyes. “Honestly, do not forget who you’re speaking to, as I’m neither Slughorn nor an idiot.”

Severus bites back a smile. “Why should I be grateful to Potter, then?”

“Because,” Nizar drawls out, “Potter could have gone along with Black’s scheme and chose not to do so. Somewhere in that idiot’s head is a conscience, even if it’s still in the early stages of development. I don’t mean gush his praises, for gods’ sake, but this is an instance in which you and Lily Evans are both right. Given that the pair of you are about to turn sixteen, I highly doubt either of you are going to be willing to admit it any time soon, either.”

“I…” Severus scowls. “I already thanked Potter. It slipped out just after we got out of the tunnel.” He’d still been terrified out of his mind, but he’d meant it. Severus doesn’t think Potter even noticed.

“Then you don’t have to thank him again, do you?”

“No,” Severus realizes. It’s a relief regarding a problem he didn’t even realize he was chewing over. “But how do I convince Lily? Werewolves are evil! She’s sharing a tower with a dangerous creature!”

“Dangerous?” Nizar doesn’t look impressed. “Remind me, Severus: when are werewolves dangerous?”

“They’re always dangerous!” Severus retorts.

“That is fear talking. I’d rather hear something factual originating from your intellect.”

Severus leans back in the armchair, sulking. He’s starting to hate it when the portrait is right. Not—not really, not like he’d hate it if it came from another student or a Marauder or his parents. But it’s galling, because…

He can’t figure out how to say it. He doesn’t even know why. It just something that _is_.

“The full moon,” Severus says, grudgingly answering Nizar’s question.

“When on the full moon in particular?”

Severus grinds his teeth, glares at the portrait, and thinks he might honestly be on the verge of trying out a modern hex to see how that scorched nameplate holds up. “At. Night.”

“Which is only part of a single day, once every lunar month.” Nizar raises an eyebrow, calm and faintly amused in the face of Severus’s burning anger. “How absolutely terrifying.”

“Shut up,” Severus mutters, feeling his entire face burn.

“Nope!”

Severus can’t quite keep himself from smiling, even though he still resents that smug smirk. “Just because Lupin’s not dangerous the rest of the month doesn’t mean I’m not…” _Afraid_ , he thinks, but he won’t be admitting that out loud. Not ever, not if he can help it.

“That part is far more acceptable than damning someone for a curse they never asked for,” Nizar says. Severus feels chastised and vindicated at the same time. “If you need to avoid Lupin to feel balanced, then do so. But do it because of what Black almost caused, not for what Lupin wouldn’t have even known he’d done until the next morning.”

“Lupin and Black aren’t talking to each other.”

Nizar snorts, unsurprised. “I wouldn’t much appreciate being set up to be used as someone else’s murder weapon, either. If I’m to kill someone, I’d prefer to do it myself.”

Severus nearly says, “Me, too,” but stops himself. It’s true, and he doesn’t think the portrait would castigate him for that sort of viewpoint—the man who inspired the ancient portrait’s creation probably saw too many real battles during the Founders’ Era to care—but to say it aloud is to admit that he _wants_ to kill someone. Several of them. Maybe he could manage to leave Lupin alone, at least as long as Lupin stays far, far away from him. Pettigrew is bloody useless. Potter…well, the portrait’s right in that Potter could have just let Severus die. He’s willing to wait and see. For now.

Give him Sirius Black and no witnesses. Severus would kill him and not regret it for a moment.

“Why are you so unconcerned about werewolves being in the school, anyway?” Severus finally asks. The clock is chiming a quiet midnight, which means it’s now 1st January 1976.

Five more days until he’s sixteen. One more year until he’s free.

“We taught werewolves in Hogwarts when I was a teacher here.”

“You—you did _what?_ ”

“I do believe we just reviewed the brief period in which werewolves are actually dangerous,” Nizar reminds him dryly. “Besides, it isn’t as if they were unmedicated.”

“Unmedicated.” Severus sits up. “You had a treatment?”

Nizar looks surprised. “You don’t? Oh, d—I’m sorry. I think I’m truly beginning to see the problem here, and I apologize. I should have realized days ago that you’d faced a werewolf that had no—” The portrait breaks off again, looking frustrated. “You really could have died. I stand by my statement of being grateful to Potter, but if I were free of this portrait frame, I’d be strangling the life out of Regulus’s older brother right now.”

“What—what did this potion do?” Severus asks in excitement, paying almost no attention whatsoever to Nizar’s new willingness to kill Sirius Black. A medication for werewolves means safety. It’s not the dead werewolf result he’d prefer, but medicated is still a way to be less fucking terrified of werewolves.

“I…” Nizar frowns. “I don’t…I think—I don’t remember. I don’t, and I really think I should. I—”

Severus is more than a bit freaked out when the portrait stops talking and stares off in the direction of the painting’s unknown, unseen boundaries within the canvas. Oh, fuck. Not this again. He hopes it’s not this. He hopes the portrait is just trying to remember something about that werewolf treatment.

“Nizar?” Severus prods after too much silence. That isn’t Nizar trying to remember something. That’s Nizar being…stuck.

Severus gets an answer, but not from the portrait. The black ribbon around Nizar’s neck untwines herself, spools out onto Nizar’s green-robed shoulder, lifts her tail—and then smacks Nizar’s ear.

“OW! What the—what was that for?” Nizar asks Kanza, offended. The tiny serpent answers, the hisses so faint that Severus can never make them out. All he gets is the vague sense that an electric fan is doing a shit job of cooling some distant room. Hogwarts has plenty of distant rooms, but no electric fans.

“Oh. Er, sorry.” Nizar doesn’t like these random moments of blank forgetfulness, either. It makes Severus think that maybe the portrait’s magic is breaking down, which makes his stomach cramp in fear. When he leaves Hogwarts, he’s never coming back, but the idea of the portrait not being here is…well, it’s wrong.

Sometimes he thinks maybe Nizar knows it, too. It’s one of the many things they’ve silently agreed not to talk about.

“Maybe…maybe they’ll recreate it,” Severus says. “Or I can find it.” Maybe it’s in the library. It might be in another language, but Hogwarts has books dating back to the Founder’s Era. It’s not entirely impossible. “What was it called?”

“Uh…Wolfsbane?” Nizar gives his head a brief shake, looking pained. “No. Maybe. That doesn’t sound right, but it’s the only term I can think of.”

“Why wouldn’t it be Wolfsbane?”

Nizar refocuses on Severus. “Because that means bane of the wolf.”

Severus stares at him.

The portrait sighs. “Bane, to you, means…I don’t know, annoying or something. Yes?”

“Close enough, I suppose,” Severus says after a moment.

“Bane comes from Old English _bana._ It means slayer, or murderer. A bane should be a label for a poison, not a treatment.”

Severus hesitates, just on the verge of saying that he doesn’t care. Fuck, but Lupin really is the most tolerable of the Marauders. He’s even managed to have a conversation or two with the werewolf that didn’t result in hexes and detentions. He doesn’t—he’ll stick with Lupin staying far away from him. In the meantime, though, Severus is going to live in the library for the rest of the holiday.

* * * *

Trinity still spends most of her time in a wheelchair, but of late has gained enough strength in her arms that she’s performed her first cautious, halting steps with braced crutches. She hates her lacking mobility just as much as she glories in her success; the idea of being able to traverse her own house or climb a set of stairs helps her to lean towards joy instead of misery. She has taken to the occasional use of Multa Facies Sucus in order to spy, but limits herself. She worries too much that it would be easy to become addicted to a substance that allows her, however briefly, to forget her injuries.

After months of long consideration, Trinity decided Richard Jugson was hers to kill, even if she has to wait to claim vengeance for what he did to her family. If he dies in the meantime, so be it, but it will not be the Underground who takes that opportunity from her. Trinity still has no intention of revealing her survival to the world. Salazar knows from bitter experience that as grief eases, so too will the self-castigation. In the meantime, all he can do is help the others to keep her occupied, and keep her safe.

The same is true of one of the newer spies, as well. Salazar knows only that they faked their death to escape being pressed or cursed into taking the Dark Mark, and that is all he should ever know of them until both of Voldemort’s wars are done.

Lucretia Lestrange has taken to using nightly potions for anxiety, but it seems it was a habit she’d already been indulging in just to survive life in her own household. Desdemona hears horrors from Lucretia that she will tell no one else, but no matter how often Desdemona suggests it, Lucretia will not run from her home. Salazar thinks her brave to stay, but dying to prove bravery turns courage into foolishness.

Salazar thinks he has also discerned their other new spy’s identity based on their reports, filtered through Trinity, but never says this to anyone else. When he cannot spy upon the Order of the Phoenix, this spy does so in his place, and they are _excellent_ at fulfilling the role of aging Edgar Doge or Mundungus Fletcher. Rubeus Hagrid is the only other Order member who indulges in enough alcohol that impersonating him is a possibility, but not even Salazar knows what would happen if one drank Multa Facies Sucus made from the hair of a half-giant. He has never in his life wanted to be tall enough to continually strike his head against door lintels.

Martin’s son, born on second September last year, gives him a joyful distraction when the spying gets to be too much, though Gertrude Flint does not allow her new child to interrupt her attendance upon her favorite Dark Lord. She leaves the care of baby Marcus to their house-elves. Salazar is of the opinion that the elves will likely do the better job of raising the poor lad. Gertrude was also gracious enough to allow Martin to name the boy Marcus, though she declared that his middle name would be Haydon, for her father.

Salazar met Haydon Bulstrode, the very fortunately dead younger brother of Desdemona’s father Harold. He had _not_ been impressed. At least of her deceased aunt, Hadrea Bulstrode, Desdemona can say that she had been more intelligent than her younger brothers. She was certainly never fool enough to follow Voldemort.

Desdemona sits down next to Augustine Travers on New Year’s Eve while they’re both again enjoying the dubious pleasure of the Carrow Estate. It hasn’t improved in nearly four years’ time. If anything, it’s worse. The Carrow Estate is now one of only seven Death Eater households capable of hosting all of the Dark Lord’s followers at once. Despite the number of Death Eaters arrested or killed in battle against the M.L.E.—or by Dumbledore’s Order, both before and after its official inception—it seems as if Voldemort’s ranks have only grown.

Salazar can’t say as he misses Druella Urquhart Rosier very much, though her son took the loss hard. He’s not overly concerned about that, either, given that Patrick Rosier and his wife Ingrid are enthusiastic Death Eaters. The same can be said of newly widowed Vanity Urquhart and her three rabid children, who do not much mourn their departed father John William Mulciber. They mourn the power he’d held in the Wizengamot. Vanity is not half the politician her husband had been, and the Mulciber influence is waning fast.

“You need rest.”

Salazar glances at Desdemona after using magic to Vanish the amount of liquor in Travers’s flute, granting him the excuse to take another and stay in character. Augustine Travers’s wife, Annette Arsenau Travers, is losing patience with her husband’s alcoholism, but she also wants another baby. Salazar has the dubious relief of Death Eater meetings to assure himself that Annette Travers won’t ask for a continuation of those attempts when her husband is most certainly unavailable—or at the very least, has the appearance of one too sloshed to perform that particular task.

In truth, Annette Travers has so little interest in Blood Purity or Voldemort’s doings that Salazar has been tempted to ask if she’d prefer the Underground. She is one of the few in attendance who truly excels at Mind Magic, however, and even now he’s still uncertain what such an attempt might lead to.

“Why do you say I need rest? I’m fine,” Salazar says. Augustine Travers has picked up a trace of his wife’s _ch’ti_ accent. Salazar’s sanity is grateful that Augustine Travers is known to resort to accentless English the moment he’s the least bit soused.

Desdemona casts a privacy charm. It’s a weak one, to make _her_ seem weak, a charm any Death Eater could easily break. However, Death Eaters cast so many of them for their own personal interfamily dealings that no one will pay it much mind. It’s casting such a thing in Voldemort’s presence that is dangerous. “You’re beginning to look as dead as you should be,” she says.

Salazar glares at her while waving the vessel containing Augustine Travers’ latest drink. There are downsides to certain individuals knowing his true identity, but in this case, it had to be done. Desdemona is recognized as second only to Saul Luiz within the Underground. If he falls to a years-long injury, or worse, someone must take on his role with full knowledge of exactly what is at stake. “That isn’t near as funny as you believe it to be.”

“It’s exactly as funny as I believe it to be.” Desdemona sips at her champagne, whereas Augustine Travers has been appearing to lap it up as if he spent days in a desert and just found an oasis. “There are seven of us now. You need not exhaust yourself, and neither do we. If Martin and myself can enjoy the winter holidays but for the occasional gathering of idiots, you can fuck off until Imbolc.”

“You bloody conniver,” Salazar replies, but it’s conniving he appreciates. She is correct; he’s taken no time to rest, no time to _breathe_ in so long that he once again has no idea what’s happening in the Muggle world. The crowning of Spain’s new king was the only day Salazar has been away from Wizarding Britain, Pure-blood politics, and Voldemort’s court in over five months. “You’ll tell me if anything occurs?”

“We always do. We know what we’re doing, idiot. Make Augustine’s excuses and leave. Annette has already done so.”

When Salazar checks in with Lucretia Prewett, he is immediately assaulted by a Black woman who is all but beside herself with glee. Her son Henry and his wife, Joy, are expecting their first child the first week of February. A boy is to be named after Henry, but a girl is to be named after Lucretia. When Salazar asks, curious, if they know yet whether or not the child is magical, Lucretia yells, “WHO CARES?” and possibly offends a number of her deceased ancestors.

Salazar already heard the news that Sirius Black ran away from 12 Grimmauld Place just after arriving home for the winter holidays. Death Eaters are mocking Pollux Black’s lack of control over his family, a joy even his sister Cassiopeia is indulging in. It’s not until Salazar has a chance to visit the Potter home after Hogwarts' winter holidays end that he discovers where Sirius Black took himself.

“Oh, yes, he came here.” Euphemia looks frustrated. “Bruised and bleeding, but Sirius made it.”

“Illegal Apparition,” Henry explains, disquieted. “Thankfully, one does not need a wand for that, though I don’t know of a Black wand that’s held a Trace on it for more than a year before the family removes it and all but dares the Ministry to complain.”

“Sirius told us that Alphard taught him to Apparate, a skill meant to be reserved for an emergency until he was properly licensed.” Elizabetha growls under her breath. “I think it was wise of Alphard to do so.”

“And they’ve not disinherited the boy?” Salazar asks, surprised. Pollux Black might be the current laughingstock of certain Pure-blood circles, but he has also been resoundingly silent on Sirius’s departure.

Elizabetha glances at Monty, who shrugs. “Given how Sirius was raised, I suspect Pollux Black still believes Sirius will come home on his own. I think the idiot is underestimating how much Sirius wants to pry off the Black family name and leave it behind for good.”

“He’ll stay here, for now. Sirius was already fretting about finding a place to live, but I told him he’ll not be departing until he’s a legal adult unless it’s to attend school, and that’s final,” Euphemia says. “Honestly, Sal—none of us can tell if Sirius is traumatized, or if he’s so afraid to slip up in a way we might find unforgivable that he dares not say anything other than _Please_ and _Thank you._ ”

“I’ll attempt to find out,” Salazar promises, though he already suspects that Sirius Black is both traumatized and afraid to slip, as his record of behavior at Hogwarts is not exactly pristine. “Did Andromeda Tonks, Dorea, Lucretia, or Alphard Black have an opinion of Sirius Black’s departure from London?”

“I think they might all have said, ‘Good for him,’ in tandem,” Henry replies.

The next Hogsmeade weekend occurs the third weekend in January. Salazar investigates the Marauders by way of silencing spells and the Invisibility Charm. Remus Lupin seems to be on his own, sharing company with a pair of students that Salazar doesn’t recognize. Odd.

James, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew are roaming around Hogsmeade together. Sirius Black is complaining, loudly, about Remus Lupin’s absence.

“You know he’s not going to come ’round until you apologize to him, you idiot,” James says in a scathing tone. “We talked about this. We talked about nothing _but_ this for most of the winter holidays!”

“I know!” Sirius Black scowls up at the winter sky. “But it was just—it wasn’t meant to be like that!”

“It _was_ like that,” James retorts, though Peter Pettigrew remains silent. “You could’ve—Sirius, we’re Marauders, not murderers!”

Salazar squeezes his eyes shut. Oh, fuck. They’re speaking of the infamous Werewolf Incident. Nizar’s portrait warned him it might happen soon.

He trails after the young men on silent feet, listening to the entire conversation. By the end of it, he’s considered strangling all three of them. Stories of what Remus Lupin has helped them to accomplish ensures that he becomes one of Salazar’s mental victims.

“That bad, huh?” Nizar’s portrait asks Salazar that evening, subdued and unhappy.

Salazar doesn’t blame him. He did not have godparents, but if his parents had thought it a wise idea, he wouldn’t be pleased to discover that his godparents were arrogant, bullying upstarts with no brains in their heads. “Sirius Black is merely sixteen. James Potter and Remus Lupin do not have their next birthday until March. He has time yet to learn that his behavior is foul. They all do.”

“Learning my godfather really was a complete twit is almost _worse_ than learning my father is cut from the same cloth,” Nizar says bitterly.

“Selfish braggarts do not sacrifice themselves for their children,” Salazar reminds him.

“I know they have to improve in some fashion, but Pettigrew—”

“Peter Pettigrew enjoys the bullying antics far more than the others realize,” Salazar interrupts, trying not to snap at his brother’s portrait. That had been a disturbing discovery, not because it was unexpected, but because the others somehow do not _notice_. Nizar nods in acknowledgement, but vanishes from his portrait frame with that same subdued expression shadowing his face.

“How was your break from spying?” Desdemona asks when Salazar returns on Imbolc, once again impersonating William Montague.

Salazar growls. “A spy never stops spying. Also, fuck all of that for a lark. Please tell me that one of ours knows of an idiot Death Eater who needs to turn up conveniently dead.”

“In a sense, I can grant you exactly that,” Desdemona replies. After the rank stupidity masquerading as festivities are done, Desdemona introduces him to her cousin, Gertrude Bulstrode Flint’s younger brother, Garen Bulstrode.

“Er, hello,” Garen Bulstrode says after briefly shaking Saul’s hand. “Sorry, I’m bloody nervous.”

“That is understandable.” So far, Salazar has the impression of a young man who hadn’t bothered with growing up after becoming an adult until war suddenly made it a necessity. There is no shame in that; too many are facing war and still refuse to mature at all. He has always seemed less than enthused by Voldemort’s ordered violence while remaining fond of the idea of blood purity.

Garen Bulstrode has Gertrude’s pale coloring, which always seems vaguely jaundiced even though neither are suffering from ill health. He is wearing full robes with barely visible sleeve edges and trousers, has dark long hair and a clean-shaven face; he is the perfect image of Wizarding Britain’s current ideal for male appearance and fashion.

“You’re twenty-three years old, and graduated from Slytherin House after managing to capture a favor from Horace Slughorn rather than the opposite, which is rare indeed,” Salazar says. “You scored an O on all of your N.E.W.T.s, and then sat at home waiting for your father to name you his Heir—an honor which his will revealed was instead granted to the next male Bulstrode-named child to be born. You complained of Haydon Bulstrode’s foolishness in public, but did not actually seem surprised by the decision, and I’d wager it is because you expected nothing less.”

“I—I didn’t mention any of that,” Garen Bulstrode stutters.

Desdemona glances at Salazar with a vague hint of surprise. “Neither did I.”

“That is because your cousin’s Mind Magic is shit,” Salazar says flatly.

“My what?” Garen Bulstrode repeats in bafflement.

Salazar crosses his arms. “To use a term you understand: Garen Bulstrode, your Occlumency is shit. Are you out of practice, or did your parents deliberately teach you incorrectly in the hopes that they would always be able to read you like an open book?”

“The latter,” Desdemona mutters under her breath, just as Garen Bulstrode answers, “Probably the latter. I knew that my parents considered me to be disposable, despite Gertrude’s marriage and me being their only other child. I tried to prove I wasn’t, but nothing was ever good enough. After Hogwarts, I ceased in those attempts, as I had brains enough in my head to recognize that there was no point.”

“Haydon Bulstrode and Gisela Derrick never once struck me as having the sense most oft given to rocks,” Salazar says, “and the rocks are at least personable sorts. You’re not being altruistic in this desire to change your allegiance. You want out from beneath Voldemort’s thumb for a reason, but you’ve well-hidden that one thing. Why?”

“I, er—cousin, please don’t kill me, as it was unintentional and I offered to do the honorable thing on her behalf,” Garen Bulstrode blurts out in a rush. Desdemona squeezes her eyes shut and then motions for him to continue. “The youngest Dolohov sibling is a sister, one who is my age. Marta. We took all the precautions, or thought we did, but she is pregnant, regardless, and insists the father is me. I offered to marry her; Marta refused that, and she refused the potion, claiming she wants the baby. Antonin is actually sympathetic; he understands how stubborn Marta can be, but it’s the eldest sister who is the current head of the family. Akilina Dolohov wants my severed head on the nearest silver platter.”

Salazar looks at Desdemona. “You were right. Faking our first Marked Death Eater’s demise will be quite the pleasant distraction.”

Garen Bulstrode seems enthused for all of two seconds before he realizes what’s been said. “Wait. We’re going to do _what?_ ”

* * * *

“I was!” Severus protests. “I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just—”

“Slipped out?” Lily’s voice is pitiless. “It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years.”

 _Years?_ What the—

“None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you, you and your precious little Death Eater friends—you see, you don’t even deny it!” Lily hisses, even though Severus never had the chance to do so. “You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?”

Severus opens his mouth, thinking several things in rapid succession. _Why are you afraid to say his name?_ and _How many years?_ and _You’ve been lying to me this entire time?_ and _Death Eaters don’t have Muggle-born friends!_ and _But I did tell you! I’ve_ been _telling you!_

Then comes the last thought, which is nothing but cold, terrible realization. Severus closes his mouth without speaking.

Lily isn’t going to listen to him. She is _never_ going to listen. Lily made up her mind about Severus before the winter holidays. She proved it by never asking him what was in that tunnel…because she didn’t care.

“I can’t pretend anymore,” Lily says, ignoring the way Severus flinches at the words. She really had lied. He’d refused to lie to her, and she—she—

“You’ve chosen your way. I’ve chosen mine.”

Severus still has to try. Doesn’t he? “No, listen. I didn’t mean—”

“—to call me Mudblood?” Lily interjects scornfully. “You call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?” She gives him one final look of utter contempt before she turns and climbs back through the portrait hole without giving him the chance to answer. Mary MacDonald gives Severus a scornful glare before shoving the entrance to Gryffindor Tower closed with a resounding, final-sounding thump.

 _It’s politics!_ Severus wants to scream. He told Lily that during the first Hogsmeade Weekend last October, reminded her of it in January, ignoring the fact that she’d had no gift for him, even though he’d given one to her. It’s politics and survival, and—

And—

And it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? Lily knows that Severus can get tangled up in his own words when he’s upset, that they get clogged up in his throat until nothing but embarrassing sputtering comes out. She wasn’t asking that question because she wanted an answer, or even would’ve believed him if he’d managed to come up with one.

Benedict Mulciber is _not_ Severus’s friend, whatever Mulciber himself might think. He’s a connection, one of many vital ones Severus is working to cultivate in his own House, because God knows he won’t get support from Slughorn or Dumbledore after Hogwarts. He doesn’t have to like these people, but he does have to tolerate them, or he faces the chance of waking up dead in his own dormitory bed. For Lily, the world is ready and waiting to place itself at her feet. Severus has tried to explain that difference between them, so many times, but she doesn’t understand.

No, that’s still wrong. Lily doesn’t _want_ to understand. He’s suddenly looking at that afternoon with the Marauders in a new, ugly light.

Lily hadn’t tried to defend him. She’s a witch with a wand, and God knows she knows how to use it, but she didn’t free Severus from _Levicorpus_. She waltzed up to James fucking Potter and told him to stop. That was it.

Severus thinks, _They_ all _believe I’m a Death Eater already. Even Lily._

Mudblood was just the final straw, no matter how much Severus regrets saying it. Nizar’s portrait says children grow up, but Lily—Lily isn’t going to forgive him. Not for that, and not for anything else she believes he’s done. Ever. For a Gryffindor, the world only works one way, and when it doesn’t, it’s wrong.

Suddenly, being a Death Eater doesn’t sound all that unappealing, after all.

* * * *

James and Sirius would probably have gone on for the rest of their idiot lives thinking of the end of fifth year as the height of the Marauder’s glory but for one thing: James’s parents overheard them.

It’s the first weekend of the summer holiday. Sirius is in the midst of cheerfully going through the high points of what they’d done to Snivellus after exams were over with. “Perfect cap for that week!” he declared.

James has no idea his parents are listening until he hears his mother gasp, “James Henry Potter! What have you done?”

Sirius turns absolutely white as Mum and Dad reveal that they’d been sitting on the bench beyond the hedgerow. If Sirius shifted into his Animagus form, James is certain they would have an albino Newfoundland on their hands.

“Uh,” is James’s brilliant attempt to cover their arses.

Sirius is still too used to the way his parents, uncle, and aunt do things, and tries to stutter out an excuse that might save them both. “It was—it was just a bit of a laugh, is all.”

“A laugh?” Mum repeats, wide-eyed. Her cheeks flush dark red. “HANGING SOMEONE IN THE AIR AND THREATENING TO STRIP THEM NAKED IN FRONT OF GOD AND EVERYONE IS NOT _A BIT OF A LAUGH,_ SIRIUS ORION BLACK!”

James completely freaks out over the fact that he’s just heard his mother scream for the first time ever. To make things worse, he then utters the stupidest thing that has ever come out of his mouth: “It’s not a big deal. He’s just a Slytherin—”

“Just a—” Mum stares at him before she abruptly sits back down on the bench, covers her face with both hands, and bursts into ragged sobs.

“Go upstairs,” Dad orders. It’s the first thing he says, and might as well be the only thing.

“But Dad—”

“Now.”

The flat tone is what convinces him. That is completely fucking terrifying.

Sirius spends the next hour pacing James’s bedroom while James sits on the bed. Sirius is convinced he’s about to be booted out onto the street—or worse, back to 12 Grimmauld Place. “No. They wouldn’t,” James says in a thick voice, but he isn’t really certain.

They wouldn’t. Would they?

It’s just a misunderstanding, is all. Snivellus is just a Slytherin.

When Gran finally comes upstairs and pushes open the door to James’s bedroom, James stands up and yells, “Itwasmyfaultdon’tsendSiriusbacktoLondon!”

Gran’s nose and forehead wrinkle a bit as she translates that slop of a sentence. Then she sighs. “Sit down, both of you. Sirius, no one will be sending you back to Islington. That would not be a punishment. That would be cruelty.”

James sits back down. Sirius crams in next to him until they’re touching from the tip of their shoulders down to their knees.

Gran doesn’t sit. She stands, gazing at them. In that moment, James has never felt more ashamed of his existence in his entire sodding life.

No, that’s wrong. He’s _never_ felt ashamed of his existence before this moment.

“When you first acquired the book, _Hogwarts: A History_ , you read it and discovered that it spoke of a rivalry between Slytherin and Gryffindor. The book said that it had been so since the school’s Founding, claiming a fight and a departure.”

James and Sirius glance at each other and nearly brush noses, they’re sitting so close. James looks back at Gran and nods. “Yeah, it’s the history. It’s everywhere.”

“Do you recall what your mother, your father, your grandfather, and myself all said when you told us about the rivalry spoken of in that book?”

James swallows, feeling another guilty flush. “You said I shouldn’t pay it any mind. But Slytherins are—you don’t know what it’s like in Hogwarts right now! Slytherins might as well be calling themselves Death Eaters. They’re evil!”

“Slytherins are evil, are they?” Something about the way Gran asks the question makes James feel like he’s just said something else that is supremely stupid. “Well. I see. I will not enjoy informing your Aunt Dorea as to your true feelings about her.”

James stares at Gran, baffled. “But—that has nothing to do with Slytherin. I don’t hate Aunt Dorea.”

“Oh?” Gran looks at Sirius when Sirius makes a sound like a dog that’s just been denied a needed treat. “Tell me again how you are related to my husband’s sister-in-law, please.”

Sirius swallows so loud the sound echoes off the walls. “Dorea Potter’s my aunt,” he rasps. “Mother’s sister.”

“And what House did Dorea Black Sort to in Hogwarts? It is related to a fact you often share quite loudly with the rest of the family.”

“She was in Slytherin,” Sirius whispers, hanging his head.

“Exactly.” Gran looks at James as if he’s an insect that needs to be stepped on. James feels sick, like his stomach is crawling up his throat. “Dorea Black Potter: Slytherin. Andromeda Black Tonks: Slytherin. Lucretia Black Prewett, Auror who fights against Voldemort: Slytherin. Alphard Black, benefactor and protector of his cousin Sirius: Slytherin. Regulus Arcturus Black I: Slytherin. Lycoris Black: Slytherin. Arcturus Black III, Lucretia’s father, wed to a Macmillan Hufflepuff: Slytherin. Helena Black, wed to your cousin Victor Potter, mother to Gilbert Potter, both of them deceased heroes of the European war: Slytherin. Phineas Nigellus II, wed to a wonderful Muggle woman: Slytherin. Arcturus Lycorus Black II, wed to Lysandra Yaxley, another hero of the European wars: both Slytherins. Belvina Black, wed to Herbert Burke, father of Phineas Nigellus Burke: all three of them Slytherins. Iola Mae Black, wed to a Muggle and mother-in-law to another war hero: Slytherin. Callidora Black Longbottom, member of the Order of the Phoenix, mother of Robert, grandmother of Frank Longbottom: Slytherin. Cedrella Black Weasley, part of the Order of the Phoenix and mother of three Weasley men also serving in the Order: Slytherin.”

Sirius sniffles without lifting his head. James feels hot tears roll down his face.

“I was concerned about your opinion of Slytherins before you had even boarded the train to go to school,” Gran says. “Your parents thought—hoped—that it was an opinion you would grow out of once you remembered the history of our families. It saddens me that this was not the case. It grieves me that the pair of you thought it a game to torture another, and _do not argue with me._ ” Gran’s voice cuts through the air like a whip, silencing whatever Sirius tried to say. “What the pair of you boasted of doing to another was not only a vile act, it was torture. You would call yourself a Potter after acting like the very Death Eaters you both claim to decry?”

James hunches down further in shame. “No,” he whispers, his voice breaking apart.

Gran looks at Sirius. “Was it because you did not like this student, or because they were a Slytherin?”

“B-both,” Sirius chokes out.

“And does Regulus face these assaults, also?”

Sirius jerks his head up. “Reg—no! I wouldn’t!”

Gran cocks an eyebrow. “Why? Because he is family? If he is a Slytherin, is he not a Death Eater already?”

Sirius stares at her with his jaw hanging open. James wonders if his rug will forgive him if he vomits on it.

“Now. You are both grounded for the entire summer holiday. Give me your messaging papers. I know you have them with you. You will not be speaking to your friends this summer. You will learn this lesson, one way or another.”

Sirius, hand trembling, reaches into his robe and pulls out his folded-up paper, one of the four that keeps the Marauders together when the holidays drive them apart. James has almost given Gran his when he pauses. “But—Remus. If we don’t talk to him, and Peter forgets…”

Gran’s expression softens. Briefly. “I will inform Remus and Peter as to why the two of you will be silent this summer. We will make certain Remus has company.”

“But—but they won’t—he’s—”

“A werewolf?” Gran gives them both a dry look, unimpressed by their shocked silence. “Remus’s mother is family to you, James. Of course we know of his curse.”

James is completely baffled by that. “Remus is family?”

“That tells me that Remus is unaware of your relationship, also.” Gran mutters under her breath in Punjab. “We will speak further of this, but later. Stay in your room. You will be called when it is time for tea.”

After Gran shuts the door behind her, Sirius slumps back. “I think I’d have liked it better if she had just poisoned me like Aunt Cassiopeia.”

James nods. He still feels like he’s going to sick up everywhere. “Yeah. Me, too.”

* * * *

Nizar’s portrait seethes over what was done to Severus by the Marauders through the entire last week of term. He seems to use his fits of temper to share knowledge, though, because that week becomes one of the most intense bouts of wordplay Severus has ever experienced. Whatever mysterious tiredness is ailing the portrait, it doesn’t stop Nizar from having the sharpest tongue Severus has ever encountered.

On the final night of term, Nizar introduces Severus to the phrase “mind magic” before he goes home for the summer holiday. He then suggests Severus visit Diagon Alley before term resumes, and look into that particular branch of magic.

“Why?” Severus asks. He has no bloody idea what mind magic is supposed to be, though he’s intrigued enough to act on the suggestion. At the very least, it will be a distraction from his best friend deciding to crush his heart into the dirt. He isn’t much inclined to go looking for what’s left of it, either.

“Because sometimes words aren’t enough,” Nizar says. That is cryptic and seems completely unhelpful until Severus visits the used bookshops in the Alley. There is nothing specifically called mind magic, but one of the proprietors whom Severus has maintained a good relationship with since his first year of schooling directs him to two different subjects: Occlumency and Legilimency.

Protecting the mind. Attacking the mind of another.

Nizar’s words suddenly make perfect sense. When words fail, Severus needs a way to defend himself. He likes the idea of having a means of attack that another might not suspect. One of the books even mentions that Pure-bloods are trained in Occlumency as children, though not many learn much about Legilimency. It was even taught in classes at Hogwarts until World War II ended.

Severus goes home with six books on Occlumency and Legilimency and nothing left in his wallet, but he thinks in this case, it’s a fair trade. He immediately asks his mother why she never bothered to teach him.

Eileen gives him her familiar, sour look. “I wasn’t taught Occlumency by my parents. Hogwarts ended the classes before I could learn it in that fashion.”

He isn’t really surprised to hear that. “Have my grandparents ever done anything useful in their entire lives?”

“You exist because they managed to breed,” Eileen responds dryly. “I can’t think of anything else.” She glances down at the books still tucked under his arm and gives him a faint nod of approval. “I may not have learned it, but I’m glad to see you making the attempt. It’s valuable magic to know.”

Severus hadn’t realized his father was at home until Tobias Snape’s voice comes roaring out of the kitchen. “KNOCK OFF WITH TALKING ABOUT THAT MAGIC RUBBISH!”

Severus flinches on instinct, the old fear already back to haunt him. Of course his father is going to try to ruin—

The bubble of fear pops. What does he have left to lose, anyway?

Anger seeps into the spaces that fear and Lily left behind. “Shut it.”

Tobias suddenly fills the kitchen doorway, revealing that he’s gained weight as well as an unhealthy pallor to his skin. “What did you say to me, boy?”

“Severus,” Eileen warns.

“No. No more. Never again.” Severus turns to face his father. “I said _shut it_.”

“You arrogant little bastard!” Tobias seethes. “If you keep opening your mouth, I’ll shut _yours_ for you!”

Severus drops his wand into his hand. “Go ahead. Try.”

His father’s eyes widen, but Tobias doesn’t back up. “You’re not allowed to use that magic shit outside of school!”

“My mother is a full-blooded witch. I’m a Half-blood. That makes this a recognized Wizarding household, and my wand doesn’t have the Trace.” Severus bribed one of the seventh-year Ollivanders into getting rid of the Trace on his wand. That particular and enterprising Ravenclaw learned Trace Removal from their wand-making relatives—not that the wand-making relatives are aware of this. “That means I can do whatever the hell I want, and no one will care.” Severus pauses. “Well. _You_ might care.”

Tobias lifts his arm and points at Severus, growling. Severus idly notes that his father’s hand is shaking. “I want you out of this house! Today! Gone! I won’t tolerate having you about any longer!”

“On the paperwork for this house, my mother is listed as one of its two owners,” Severus says. “Mother, do you wish for me to leave?”

“Only when you think you’re ready to do so,” Eileen replies, sounding as if she doesn’t care either way.

“Then I don’t think I’ll be leaving just yet. But…” Severus straightens his arm, which pushes his wand just a touch further in his father’s direction. Tobias finally takes a step back. “If you touch me. If you lay a finger on me. If you attempt to destroy any of my belongings. If you so much as even fucking _speak_ to me for the rest of this summer, I will not hesitate. Do you understand?”

Tobias scowls. “Go to hell, you ungrateful little twat.” Then he turns and stomps away.

“You first,” Severus mutters under his breath, lowering his wand. He isn’t going to let it out of his sight this summer. He’ll bathe and sleep with his wand if he has to. Tobias Snape isn’t going to snap Severus’s wand the way he snapped the wand of Eileen Prince when her back was turned. Severus still can’t understand why she’s never replaced it, but asking that question resulted in the one and only time his mother has ever slapped him.

“I’m not certain if that was wise or foolish,” Eileen says.

Severus sneers at her. The anger hasn’t faded with his father’s departure. If anything, it’s grown larger. “I’m certain that I don’t care.”

By the middle of July, anger has become a constant companion. Severus abandons his useless father’s name after he listens to another of Tobias and Eileen’s angry, screaming volleys of words. He signs his hand-me-down copy of _Advanced Potions Making_ with what he’s chosen, and it looks right. He’s willing to admit that it also looks pretentious, but better to take pride in who he is than resent what he will never be. His mother’s shame is not his fault.

Severus receives his O.W.L. grades the first week of August. It isn’t as early as last year, but it’s still off-schedule. O in Potions. O in Transfiguration—that’s a surprise. E in Charms. O in Astronomy—as if he’d be shown up when he’s been studying N.E.W.T. material since he realized how vital Astronomy was for brewing. O in History; he wonders if anyone else managed it. O in Herbology. O in Defence Against the Dark Arts. E in Arithmancy. Study of Ancient Runes had nearly driven him spare, but he still managed an E.

“Os and Es on your O.W.L.s, then? I suppose that’s acceptable,” is Eileen’s grudging praise.

Severus isn’t in the mood to appease anyone right now. Maybe not ever again. “I’m glad you think so. I certainly out-performed you, Mother.” He turns and leaves the room while she’s still sputtering in outrage.

Tobias tries, only once, to nick Severus’s wand in order to be rid of it. His father becomes his first test subject for Legilimency. It works in the sense that Severus invades Tobias Snape’s mind, seeing fragments of his father’s memory of the time he plotted and succeeded in destroying Eileen’s wand so Tobias could render himself “safe” from his wife. It also leaves Severus feeling as if he’s just gone and dunked himself in the nearby polluted sludge calling itself a river.

His father is knocked back and lands hard on the floor. It doesn’t do his ill-seeming complexion any favors.

“I warned you,” Severus whispers, shutting his bedroom door and locking it. Only then does he let himself tremble, a hint of the old fear that’s all but blanketed by newfound rage.

Half-panicked, humiliated and enraged by what Potter, Black, and Pettigrew had done, Severus slipped. He called Lily a word he didn’t mean because of how often he’d needed to use it to appease the powerful members of Slytherin House.

 _Does that mean I really do believe in Pure-blood ideology?_ Severus wonders, staring up at his yellowed ceiling late at night. He always told Lily he didn’t, that it didn’t matter, that he didn’t care he was a Half-blood and she was a Muggle-born. At first, yes, he’d hated Lily’s sister because she was a Muggle, and he’d always had his drunken father and some right shitty primary school “mates” to teach Severus what Muggles were like. After a few months of knowing her, and knowing Lily’s parents, Severus’s dislike of Petunia no longer had a thing to do with magic. Petunia Evans is just a horrible, spiteful prat.

“I told you from the very first day we met that I would never lie to you, Lily,” Severus murmurs at the cracks in his plaster ceiling. He did, though. He did it while humiliation turned his skin to fire and his insides to ice. Just one single lie.

_I don’t need help from a Mudblood!_

Pride goeth before a fall. He was certainly dropped to the ground without a care not long after that moment of stiff-necked, ridiculous, male-posturing _pride_.

The more Severus studies his six acquisitions on Legilimency and Occlumency, the more he realizes that Nizar’s suggestion was no whim. The portrait has been priming him to learn these subjects since the beginning of his fourth year. “ _Hold onto a moment in time, slow it down in your head. Practice_ ,” Severus paraphrases, shaking his head. That sort of visualization is a major step in learning Occlumency, and he has, indeed, practiced.

Severus has always known he has his father’s temper and his mother’s sadistic tendencies. He doesn’t want to be ruled by either. He’s going to master Occlumency to keep both of those traits at bay. That magic is going to save him from making another mistake he can’t take back.

If Potter tries anything next term, Severus is going to use Legilimency to land him on his arse.

Maybe it isn’t Pure-blood ideology that Severus believes in. Maybe he just believes that magical kids should get the hell away from Muggles like Tobias Snape. To be safe.

 _Lily’s parents aren’t like your father,_ his treacherous thoughts remind him again. _They’re safe._

 _Petunia isn’t safe,_ Severus retorts in his own head. Petunia’s constant diatribes about “that Snape boy” probably hadn’t helped Lily’s view of Severus. Petunia is still on schedule to marry that right bastard Vernon Dursley, too.

Severus had a brief conversation with Mr. Evans earlier in the summer, and the poor man looks more and more as if he might off and die at any moment—possibly just from the stress of having Dursley as a future son-in-law. Would it be different if Muggle parents who proved capable of bearing magical children were gathered up immediately, taken into the Wizarding world, and safeguarded just as fiercely as a Pure-blood’s offspring? He knows there are hardliners among the Death Eaters who would never go for it, but why not? Voldemort has always preached that protecting magical blood should be among their most important goals, and that’s a method of protection.

 _Arrogant little dust mote._ He’s never forgotten Nizar’s opinion of Voldemort. _I’ll still be hanging here when he’s dead and gone, most likely_.

 _So will I,_ Severus thinks, and it feels like the remains of his heart just cracked in two. _I’ll be dead and gone, and you’ll still be hanging in the Common Room_.

On first September, on the Hogwarts Express to begin his sixth year, Severus snarls his way into keeping a single train compartment all to himself. He hears later that certain students, such as Ravenclaw Octavian Burke and Slytherin Selene Crouch, were invited to join Slughorn’s stupid Slug Club. This does not include Lily Evans; despite her skill, she isn’t in the category of those who Slughorn considers to be _important._ It definitely doesn’t include Severus, who can’t decide if he’s annoyed or relieved by his Head of House’s deliberate slight.

At least Severus doesn’t have to put up with Potter, Pettigrew, Lupin, or Black in Potions class anymore. Black is taking Alchemy. Pettigrew is too stupid for Potions or Alchemy. Lupin has never been interested in brewing, though he’s intelligent enough that he scored well on end-of-term Potions exams every single year. God knows what the hell Potter is doing, but Potions is the one N.E.W.T. class when Severus doesn’t have to endure the presence of any of the fucking Marauders. He only has to endure Lily, who is civil, yet makes it perfectly clear that she’s keeping that black-and-white line drawn between them.

After his seventeenth birthday, he doesn’t have to endure any of them at all.


	19. Surviving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things are worth dying for. Others are worth living for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual wonderful beta-flail cheer-reading performed by @norcumii of Tumblr fame and much ponderances of hot clones.
> 
> NOTE: Accidentally had Guinevere in place of Selene Crouch for Alex Fawley's spouse because being tired anyway no matter the sleep involved fucks with your sense of people and names in annoying ways. Edited now; sorry about that.

Severus watches Death Eaters utter false laughter and flattery at each other, accompanied by the strains of quiet music from live performers and a seemingly endless flow of wine and champagne. 1977 was an eventful year, and they’re still celebrating it on 6th January 1978. The Epiphany.

The realization isn’t sudden or striking, as the holiday would imply. Severus is eighteen years old, and he has been slowly recognizing, far too late, that he is a complete fucking idiot.

Katrina Farley’s death earlier in the evening merely cemented the realization. The idea that they could be killed by the Dark Mark has always been an unspoken thought, a vague and unproven threat—until Farley infuriated the Dark Lord. Torture was not enough of a punishment for her transgression. Farley lit up from within, as if _Avada Kedavra_ had been cast inside her heart and bloomed outward.

Whatever means Voldemort used to cause her death, it was not sudden. It was not painless.

It was fucking terrifying.

Narcissa Malfoy joins him at the railing where Severus has been standing, overlooking the grand foyer of Malfoy Manor. “You’re not indulging?”

“Thank you for your hospitality, Madam Malfoy. However, I have no desire to drink while surrounded by deadly idiots,” Severus replies. At least Narcissa is a welcome distraction from dwelling on Farley’s death.

Narcissa isn’t insulted, though she could easily have taken offence. “I don’t, either.” She hands over the delicate wine flute she’s carrying. “It isn’t poison, I promise. I’ve been drinking it all evening.”

Severus glances at her, but if Narcissa wanted him dead, the status he’s earned in Voldemort’s court wouldn’t matter. She would suffer nothing if she lifted her wand and killed him. He sniffs the wine flute, frowning. “Apples?”

“Cider. No alcohol whatsoever. I am a Black, darling,” Narcissa says. “I’m not foolish enough to indulge around these buffoons, either.”

“I see.” Wise of her. Too many duels tend to break out among the sodden dunderheads.

“Dobby.” Narcissa’s word of command summons a thin, spindly-limbed house-elf with bulbous green eyes. “Please fetch another flute of my special champagne for Severus. Ensure that the others know that he is to receive it whenever he requests champagne in my household, never alcohol.”

The house-elf bows his head. “Yes, Mistress,” he whispers, and Disapparates with a pop.

“You didn’t need to do that, much as I appreciate it.” Severus often spends these engagements holding a wine flute filled with alcohol, a semblance of participation. It would be nice for the semblance to become more realistic, as he is also surrounded by _paranoid_ deadly idiots.

“But I preferred to do so. I like to have a conversationalist around who can keep up, has good manners, and who will not end our evening by babbling nonsense and spilling expensive champagne on my robes. Please call me Narcissa. I think we’ve known each other long enough by now that you’ve earned the familiarity.”

Severus smiles. “I sympathize with the need to suffer through the babbling nonsense, Narcissa.”

“Thank you.” Narcissa waits until they both have glasses of cider. Severus think it’s of very good quality, just like everything else in Malfoy Manor. “I did want to know: why the long face tonight? I’m given to understand that it’s your birthday. Felicitations to you, and may you see many more.”

“I hope to do so.” Severus glances down at the letter in his left hand, which he has been folding and unfolding all evening. “Is this curiosity, or a search for gossip?”

“It can’t be both?”

Severus smiles again and hands her the letter. “This is why. Please return it when you’re done. I need to finish mauling it to death afterwards.”

At first, Narcissa seems to be reading merely to be polite. Then her eyebrows begin a slow, stately rise. “This is what is upsetting you?”

“Yeah—yes. It is.”

Narcissa lowers the letter. “Severus, this says that not only will you be a published brewer as of next month, but Britain’s Brewing Alliance wants to grant you the title of Reader for what they say is _astounding_ skill in research and potions-brewing!”

“And they can’t do so without first declaring me a Fellow, and they can’t do that unless I’ve achieved an O-grade on my Potions N.E.W.T.” Severus takes the letter when Narcissa holds it out, folding the paper before returning it to its envelope. “Our schedules are erratic, at best. When the hell am I going to find the time to sit a N.E.W.T.?”

“I see.” Narcissa sips her cider. “You know, I could always encourage certain mindsets—”

“No.” Severus sighs and rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. I apologize—fucking hell. Narcissa, what I mean to say is that if the BBA is going to do such a thing, I want to have earned it on my own.”

Narcissa gives the letter a pointed glance. “You have.”

“Yes, but that’s…” Severus chews over his words. “This war has to end at some point. I want to earn this on my own merit. I don’t want it ever said of me that the only reason I’m any sort of success at all is because someone threw money at the problem until the problem went away.”

Narcissa laughs. “That is what one in my position tends to do—throw Galleons at the problem until the problem goes away. But Severus, I do understand your desire to earn it on your own merit. When you find the time to sit your Potions N.E.W.T., and the Ministry tries to keep you from doing so, will you then accept my help?”

“If there is anything remaining of the Ministry after I’m done with it? Gladly,” Severus replies, and she laughs again. It’s a Pure-blood’s light and rare sprinkle of a laugh, but there is something about hers that’s more genuine than the sounds coming from downstairs. Maybe it’s because Severus knows that Narcissa _never_ laughs unless she truly finds something amusing. Bellatrix, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to know how to sodding well _stop_ laughing.

It’s nice to tell someone about this unexpected birthday gift, at least. Narcissa doesn’t mock his ambition, or his frustration, and the portrait who would be glad for him is unavailable. The friend who might once have been proud of him considers Severus to be the enemy.

 _Was it worth it?_ he asks himself snidely.

Stupid question; it never was. Now he is in a situation he finds disagreeable, if not yet completely intolerable…but he is a Slytherin. He will survive until another solution presents itself, no matter how much he might wish to kill some of these complete arseholes in the meantime.

There is a battle scheduled the next evening, one Severus is ordered to participate in. Severus doesn’t voice his opinion that a scheduled battle isn’t a battle, it’s a raid…but the timing suits him. It means he can set something on fire to vent his frustration. He can also be certain that his target in this remote portion of Northampton isn’t occupied, as the house looks to be one stiff breeze away from collapsing.

Casting the spells, controlling the fire; it helps to distract him from the fact that his fellow Death Eaters are roaming the streets, torturing and killing helpless Muggles.

Severus doesn’t know what to do about it, aside from the fact that he dislikes their behavior. Telling them that this is not what Slytherins are supposed to be would just see him laughed at.

If he tries to stop them and fails, he dies. If he succeeds in stopping them, he dies when Voldemort discovers that Severus overstepped his bounds.

Benedict Mulciber decides Severus has an excellent idea. He sets another home on fire, and then Disapparates with the other Death Eaters when tonight’s leader, Dolohov, sends a signal of white sparks into the dark sky.

“Ugh. Careless idiot,” Severus mutters. Then he takes another look at the burning home, swears, and runs straight toward the flames.

That isn’t an empty Muggle home. That’s a wizard’s home Mulciber set ablaze, and its wards are signaling that its occupants are in danger.

One coughing lungful of smoke is enough to remind Severus that there are charms to protect himself from smoke and fire, and if he wants to live, he’ll use them. He then retrieves an obviously magical child with flame-blue hair, along with her terrified Muggle childminder.

 _A Death Eater wouldn’t save a Muggle,_ Severus thinks, and scowls. He isn’t angry with himself in this moment. He loathes every Slytherin who has ever passed through Hogwarts wearing silver and green who never once learned to understand the tenets of their own House.

_Do not maim for pleasure. Do not rape. Do not forget those who gave you joy. Pay your debts. Do not mistake kindness as a form of repayment, and do not expect a freely granted kindness to be a debt owed. Remember that a Slytherin is cunning; a Slytherin finds ways to survive when others will perish._

He is a Slytherin first, foremost, and always. Leaving the Muggle teenager to suffocate on the smoke produced by magical flames is against the rules he has chosen to live by.

“My house is on fire,” the blue-haired child says, sounding curious rather than scared.

“Yes, it is.” Severus hasn’t interacted with small children in years, but he does recall that they prefer to be acknowledged.

At least the fire isn’t causing much damage. The wards that were placed to protect against housefires are doing excellent work.

Severus wipes the memory of himself from the teenager’s mind when she belatedly starts screeching in fear. He’s also tempted to leave her with a Legilimency-placed reminder that when you’re responsible for another’s life, _panicking_ won’t fucking help.

While the brainless teenager is still disoriented and stupefied from being Obliviated, he asks the tiny witch, “Where are your parents?”

“Phoenix,” the girl says, and then clamps her hand over her mouth. “Nope.”

She’s perhaps four or five years old. Severus isn’t in the mood to use memory-modifying charms or Legilimency on a five-year-old. “I won’t tell anyone you said that if you don’t tell anyone I was here.”

The girl gives him a huge, puppy-eyed look, complete with protruding lower lip. “You promise?”

Severus sighs. “Yes. I promise.” Her parents would most likely rather kill him than listen to him tattle on their child, anyway.

“Then I won’t tell.” She then sits down on the ground and regards her burning house with bright-eyed curiosity. Severus leaves while she’s distracted, unsettled by the entire encounter.

What are these stupid raids for? They don’t cause Muggles to fear Death Eaters, because no one is telling them that Death Eaters and magic exist. They’re not likely to cause wizards and witches who dislike Voldemort to suddenly start being fond of him, either.

Severus is late for the debriefing that is always mandatory after these battles—these _raids._ He is going to remember and hold onto that distinction from now on. At least outright battles are fucking honest.

Voldemort lifts his wand in a lazy gesture. “Please do inform me as to why you are late, Severus.”

Severus stares at the white tip of Voldemort’s wand…and realizes, with absolute delight, that he can tell the Dark Lord the truth. “Mulciber set a wizard’s home on fire, Lord Voldemort.” The idiots always mutter in fear when Severus says Voldemort’s name, never recognizing that he only does so at the exact right times. “There was a child inside who was obviously magical. A Half-blood at the least, if not a Pure-blood. There were good fire-proofing charms on the home, but the child was being looked after by a fool, and the smoke would have killed them.”

“You retrieved this child, then.” It isn’t a question.

Severus inclines his head. “Of course, my Lord.”

Voldemort praises Severus before the other Death Eaters for not wasting “proper” magical blood. Mulciber spends the next week unable to walk upright.

Severus should feel reassured, but he doesn’t. Voldemort could easily have decided to punish him anyway. It doesn’t take a brilliant wizard to notice that the Dark Lord isn’t exactly the most consistent person in Britain. Tonight went in Severus’s favor. It won’t always do so.

Minister for Magic Millicent Bagnold announces her decision to resign from office on the Summer Solstice that year. Severus listens to the Wizarding Wireless broadcast while residing as a _guest_ in the Rowle estate. Bagnold assures the Wizarding public that a new Minister for Magic will be confirmed by an emergency vote of the Wizengamot, and that Wizarding Britain will know their new Minister’s name by evening. The _Evening Prophet_ arrives with a picture of a slightly rotund man in a bowler hat that doesn’t suit him in the slightest.

“Who the absolute hell is Cornelius Fudge?” Severus asks.

It’s a rhetorical question, but the closest Death Eater, former Ravenclaw Blythe Petersen, decides to answer him. “He’s a nobody, from what I’ve heard. No-name politician from a no-name department in the Ministry who just happened to hold a family Wizengamot seat.”

Severus squeezes his eyes shut, holding back a tidal wave of profanity. “Are they trying to help us win this war?”

“The Wizengamot is stocked with Death Eaters. Yes, they are,” Petersen says, and then vanishes into the crowd. Severus would actually prefer Petersen had stayed. He can tolerate Petersen, who he knew of in Hogwarts. He’s certainly smarter than fucking Benedict Mulciber.

The Wizengamot is a stacked deck. Of course it is. Most of those who share names with its members are here tonight. Severus has to learn to be more observant, or he would have known that already.

He spends the evening watching the other Death Eaters celebrate Bagnold’s resignation and Fudge’s election. They’re wrong to do so, even if Voldemort isn’t forbidding them from being stupid. Bagnold was a popular minister, a Half-blood from a respectable House with a strong seat on the Wizengamot. Her being driven out of office by so many assassination attempts might be seen by Death Eaters as weakness, but those who liked Bagnold will be angry…and scared. People who are angry and scared tend to respond in unforeseeable ways.

He has first-hand experience with that state of mind.

“You aren’t celebrating, Severus.”

Severus refuses to react to the sudden presence of the Voldemort at his back. He has a few of his own rules to live by aside from those of a Slytherin: _Show no weakness._ “No, my Lord.”

“Why ever not?”

“Bagnold’s resignation is…” No, those words won’t do. Try again, idiot. “Bagnold’s resignation is only a temporary victory. She was popular with many, and some of them were not foolish.”

“You think they will treat this as a rallying point.” Voldemort sounds amused. “They still will not succeed. Wizarding Britain will lose this war, Severus.”

 _I’m starting to doubt that, actually,_ Severus thinks. He keeps that idea buried so deeply he barely acknowledges it himself. “I am not concerned about that, my Lord.” He tilts his head in the direction of the revelers and sneers at them. “They think they’ve won already. It will make them careless.”

“If they are careless in war, and die for it, then they deserve their fate,” Voldemort replies, sauntering away.

Severus watches him go, chilled anew. There was no remorse for those potential losses. Voldemort voiced no concern or care for them at all.

 _Arrogant little dust mote,_ the memory of a portrait’s assessment taunts him.

 _Yes, I’m aware, thank you,_ Severus snarls at the reminder, and goes to see if there’s something to drink in this stupid manor that isn’t drugged or poisoned. Then he is going to find a safe room, lock the door, ward everything to blazes, and get completely pissed.

* * * *

James Potter isn’t new to Muggle things, which is a gigantic fucking lie that he’d never say aloud in front of Lily or Remus. He knows _of_ Muggle things, just like any wizarding kid who sat through Muggle Studies out of curiosity for two years, took the O.W.L., and then bolted before someone tried to convince him to continue the class. Not even his interest in Lily Evans was enough to convince James to continue on with that nonsense, half of which he’s convinced their professor was just pulling out of his arse.

Sirius absolutely loves the Muggle trains. It’s his first time as a passenger in one, despite the Black family townhouse being located in Islington, right in the middle of Muggle doings, but that’s the Black family for you. Those Blacks, anyway. The Not-Sane Blacks. James is only one train ride ahead of Sirius for experiences. He likes the Muggle trains that speed along on the ground, or above the ground in some instances, but the London Underground can keep its rattling, jam-packed cars all for itself; he wants no part of that ever again.

James jams his fingers into his jacket pocket again, fiddling with the box hidden in its Extended depths. He’s nervous. Lily told them they had nothing to be nervous about, that she’s filled her parents’ ears with information about James and Sirius since the last quarter of their sixth year, but he’s going to be nervous anyway. He wishes he had Sirius’s confidence about this, but if there is one thing Sirius Black has in spades, it’s bloody confidence. It’s a family trait that practically oozes from his pores, which…well. Sirius has learned not to call Snape _Snivellus_ , and he’s sympathetic when Lily has days when she misses the gangly bastard, but that same confidence means it’s hard to convince Sirius otherwise when he’s decided he has a brilliant idea that is, in fact, extremely stupid.

He hates that they got caught up in a feedback loop of bad ideas, cycling through them over and over again, in regards to most things about school for five years. James isn’t the best student. Sirius and Lily are the swots, with Remus right behind them, and he’s always been all right with that. Mediocre grades don’t mean mediocre wizard, but that was never James’s real problem.

James still flushes with shame when he remembers the summer of 1976. They’d deserved every moment of it, too. His parents hadn’t raised him to be a bully, and that’s exactly what he’d been, exactly what he’d done, without it ever once occurring to him that he was acting like a right bastard.

At least he can honestly say he was being altruistic when he volunteered to become an Animagus in order to help Remus, because his Transfiguration was so sodding awful that Professor McGonagall might have pulled out some of her own hair in despair. Becoming an Animagus was fucking difficult, but he fought his way through it, because Remus needed them on the full moon. Side benefit he hadn’t expected, though: his regular Transfiguration improved by bloody _spades._

Professor McGonagall even asked James if he’d studied over the summer before sixth year began, and James had sort of stared at her before blurting out, “Sort of?” in wide-eyed panic that one Animagus might be able to sense another. After all, Gran had looked at him, raised an eyebrow, and had just bloody well _known._

“Stag?” Gran asked.

James nodded, because you were stupid if you ever lied to Gran.

“Why?”

“Remus,” James said.

Gran nodded. “Wise of you. And you?”

“Uh, Newfoundland,” Sirius replied, “because irony is a di—uh, a thing.”

Then Voldemort had killed Cousin Charlotte, Sam, Joan, and their son William the summer before James started his seventh year, the year William should’ve started as a firstie at Hogwarts. That changed his entire career path. Fuck the Ministry; Dad could deal with the Wizengamot Seat if Granddad ever retired from it. James added his name to the Auror list, and so did Sirius. Professor McGonagall told Sirius that his Alchemy class would count towards the Auror’s Potions requirement for graduating students, so long as his N.E.W.T. score was acceptable, and sent him on his way. Then she looked at James. Maybe she saw the determination in his eyes, because Professor McGonagall had sighed and said she would speak to someone _useful_ within the Ministry to find out if wartime conditions might waive James’s missing Potions requirement—but he should study them in the meantime, as he still had to be knowledgeable about them!

Now they’ve graduated, the war is getting worse, and the Marauders have missed half a year of full moons because of battles or emergencies or Auror training. Peter isn’t an Auror and he can be there for Remus, but that doesn’t really count. The werewolf thinks of Peter as pack, but Peter is also literally rat-sized. A rat can’t exactly escort a werewolf around in a forest and hope to be able to stop him if the werewolf decides someone looks like food.

Ugh, nope, unhappy thoughts. James isn’t in the mood. To distract himself, he glances over at Sirius, whose face is still pressed against the train window, a wide smile on his face. His Animagus form would probably be trying to shove his nose out of the window so the wind would blow his ears straight back. In the meantime, James admires Sirius’s form-fitting denims that flare out at the knee, the brown leather motorcycle boots on his feet, the white button-down shirt with its open collar, and brown leather coat—not black, not like James always thought he would go for.

It’s all Muggle, but Sirius didn’t buy any of it. He would’ve, given half a chance and time to breathe long enough to step foot into a Muggle clothing shop. Whenever Sirius hit London before he ran away from home, he devoted his brief flirtations with free time to record shops. Everything Sirius is wearing today were the last gifts sent to him by his Uncle Alphard, just before Alphard Black was murdered. Sirius keeps wearing them, especially the boots and jacket, as reminders: Sane Blacks exist and Sirius is one of them; Alphard wasn’t afraid of the Not-Sane Blacks; Alphard Black had excellent bloody taste in threads. It’s the sort of outfit that goes just right with Sirius’s hair, which he’s grown out past his shoulders in sleek, slightly curled black waves. He’s the oddball Black with skin that will take color in the sun instead of just burning him to a crisp, so his face has a gold tint that somehow doesn’t clash with his eyes. His long-fingered hand rests on the window; the Black family ring has been on his left index finger since Sirius’s father died in August. Pollux had given one each to Regulus and Sirius at the funeral, Sirius told them later, and said that whichever brother survived the war would be the family heir and patriarch. If they both survived, it would be Sirius, but Regulus was expected to make his older brother behave “like a proper Black.”

Lily dresses Muggle as easily as she breathes. James thinks she looks amazing in witch’s robes, and wears them gracefully, but there is something about wearing Muggle clothes that relaxes hunched shoulders that James didn’t notice for far too long. Today it’s a lady’s teed-shit—dammit, _t-shirt_ —with a thin-line collar instead of the thick band James has seen on other t-shirts for men. The collar is high, resting at the base of her throat, so the long V-neck opening of her pale blue hooded jumper reveals the green shirt beneath. It’s a neat contrast, especially with her unbraided fall of fiery hair falling down to her chest, where it curls up at the ends. Intentionally or not, that combination makes James pay a lot more attention to her breasts than he probably should in public. He’s noticed Sirius doing the same thing, though, and Lily smirks at them every time she catches them at it. Maybe it really was intentional, because Lily Evans is just a little bit evil in a fantastic way. Then again, she’s training as a healer just as much as she’s training at fighting, and Madam Pomfrey taught James that healers are probably all just a bit evil.

Lily is so pale, just like Granddad, even though Uncle Charles is proof that their family isn’t nearly as white as Granddad’s appearance implies. James thinks of Dad and his great-uncle Charles as a mismatched set, and Lily and Petunia are the same way. Pale politician and bronze troublemaker; curvy and kind instead of bony and sour, which is how Petunia Evans Dursley looks in every photo Lily has of her sister.

Maybe if James had a sibling, he’d be a mismatched set, too, what with his skin that always looks like he’s picked up a good tan, and having Dad’s hair, though his is black like Gran’s. That maybe-sibling could’ve been more like Mum, pale and always pink-cheeked, with sea-colored eyes instead of James’s hazel eyes that tried to be like Granddad’s and didn’t quite make it. The maybe-sibling would look like their mum, the way James looks like his dad…except he really doesn’t. Wild magic-weird hair, dimpled chin, and glasses, yeah, check, but James really doesn’t know where in the family tree his nose came from, or the way his face is in proportion to his height but still seems like it’s too long and angular to be his.

He doesn’t have a maybe-sibling with pale skin, though. He has Lily, and her skin is perfect for her fire-eyebrows and her green eyes that look like green bottle glass, at least until you see their brighter, burning emerald fire. Her skin won’t pick up color, not like Sirius does. If she gets a sunburn, the result is freckles, and James adores them all like a complete sodding dork.

She’s also wearing denims, revealing how long her legs are even after the denims flare out at the knee. The bottoms are embroidered with a bright line of flowers that wrap all the way around the hemline. Lily isn’t wearing her “battle boots” today, the resized men’s boots with their metal safety toes that she uses to kick any Death Eater who is stupid enough to come too close. Instead, it’s beige trainers with white stripes and laces that have to be new, as James hasn’t seen them before. She also has something she hates and calls a leash, a Muggle ladies’ purse with a strap that hangs over the shoulder, because Lily says it would look odd to the neighbors if she _didn’t_ have one.

James glances down at his suit jacket, button-down shirt, and trousers. The white shirt looks normal enough, but even he knows that the tweed brown suit is several decades out of date. Lily had adjusted his glasses that morning, smiled, and said that James looked like a uni professor in the gorgeous way instead of the doddering way. He’d taken it as the compliment Lily meant it to be, but had immediately resolved that he needed to go bloody shopping for Muggle-wear as soon as possible.

“Not interested in looking like a gorgeous uni professor, thanks.”

Lily grinned at him. “What, you’ve never found any of our teachers to be a looker?”

James hesitated, because admitting that he’d looked at their new and very young Astronomy teacher more than thrice might get his arse kicked. “Er,” he’d stuttered, and Lily laughed.

Cokeworth is not exactly what James expected. When Lily said Muggle village, James had thought of neat little houses, maybe with older thatched-roof cottages here and there, with a market for shopping and maybe a tradesman or two. He hadn’t expected the reeking, sludge-like river that makes the Thames look refreshing, or the layer of black filth on so many of the buildings. There aren’t any neat little houses or cottages, just terraced housing and big brick sore thumbs that host flats to lease or buy, all of it originally built for the workers who ran the mill that caused the river to turn to sludge and black filth to decorate every house.

“You grew up here?” Sirius sounds horrified.

Lily nods. “Only after I was eight. I still remember when we lived in Kingsbury before Dad retired. Mum and Dad bought a place in Cokeworth that was as far from this mess as they could get without leaving the village entirely. I don’t think they were in love with the pollution, but they grew up here…and that same pollution means it’s cheap to buy a house in the village. Dad didn’t want Mum or any of us having to worry about a mortgage—a loan for buying a house, usually means you’re paying for it for decades—so he bought the house, and that was that.”

“Why doesn’t anyone clean their houses? Or at least their windows?” James asks, keeping his voice quiet. A lot of the windows on the flat-leasing houses are cracked open, even though it’s November.

“Oh, they do.” Lily sounds sad. “It always comes back, is all. The mill has been closed down for nearly twenty years now, but that black crud just…whatever it is, it has no intention of going away. Even painting over it doesn’t work for long.”

They pass a street with a sign hanging from the top of a metal post, swinging back and forth in the desultory breeze. “That’s Spinner’s End. Eileen Snape, Severus’s mother—she still lives in that first house at the beginning of the lane. Try to avoid her if you see her. She’s always hated Muggles, and me, because she married a Muggle man who was an utter bastard.”

James glances at the house in question. It’s another brick house with dirty windows, though it only has a ground floor and a smaller first storey with dormer windows. It’s set well back from the street, with a front lawn that is overgrown with high grass and weeds. The house looks sort of rundown and decrepit, like the owner doesn’t care if it falls down around their ears. He’s so used to Preserving Charms on houses that seeing one in that condition is a shock.

“I’d be more worried about running into Sni—Snape, personally,” Sirius says.

James glances at him. _Nice save, you dumb shit,_ he mouths. Sirius winces and nods.

“He’s not here. I might’ve gone to Eileen’s house and knocked and asked if she knew where—Easter break. That’s why I went home for Easter break in sixth year,” Lily admits. “Severus came home that January just long enough to move out. He’s not really fond of his mother, either.” She lets out a faint, unhappy laugh. “Okay, that’s probably putting it mildly. I never saw Eileen Snape be anything but horrible. She told me that Sev left and then slammed the door in my face.”

“Geeze. Raised by a horrible Muggle _and_ a horrible Pure-blood. At least they weren’t poisoning him?” Sirius offers.

Lily shrugs. “I don’t really think there is a difference between words that poison and actual poisons. Not anymore.”

“Yeah.” Sirius kicks at a broken bit of roadway. “Makes you wonder why he thought Death Eaters were such hot shit, doesn’t it? Most of the wankers are Pure-bloods.”

Lily is silent for a few minutes. James and Sirius follow along, while James worries about her hunched shoulders and pensive expression. They turn onto a lane like Spinner’s End, though this one has nicer houses and trees to go with them. It’s also longer, meandering along past what Sirius identifies as a Muggle play park for kids, though it looks abandoned.

“I think…” Lily finally says. “I think maybe Sev thought he didn’t have a choice anymore.”

It’s James’s turn to wince. The only solace he can take from that statement is at least it wasn’t only the Marauders that would’ve caused a Slytherin to make that kind of decision. He hadn’t been lying to his parents about the Us or Them level of tension that thrummed between Gryffindor House and Slytherin House. He was an arse, yeah, but the tension is real.

“This is it,” Lily announces, walking onto a wide concrete pad that has a Muggle car parked on it. The concrete pad is attached to a two-storey house with white clapboard siding and a shingled roof. There is black grime on the lowest clapboards, but it has trees and greenery.

“It’s nice,” James says, because it’s a hell of a lot nicer than pretty much everything they saw next to the river. The windows are all clean, hung with curtains and blinds that are open downstairs, but closed upstairs. Potted plants hang on both sides of the front door, suspended by long cast-iron hooks.

Sirius nods. “People love the place. It makes a hell of a difference, believe me.”

After Lily rings the bell, which makes an interesting buzzing sound somewhere within the house, the door opens. The woman who steps out has Lily’s nose and eyes, but for someone Lily said was only sixty-five, James would have thought she was ninety. Her hair is entirely grey, held back in a simple, neat bun on the back of her neck; her hands look fragile and frail. _All_ of Jane Evans looks frail, despite her smart green-striped top and matching skirt, but she greets Sirius and James with a warm smile and a solid grip of her hand. Then she’s not escorting them inside so much as shoving them along.

“I’ve just made scones, and there are good preserves and fresh cream,” Mrs. Evans announces. “You’ll be having a light tea with us, won’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sirius replies immediately, a bit wide-eyed. James feels a little shell-shocked himself. They have just set foot into their first Muggle home, and they’ve already been kidnapped.

“Don’t let her bully you into having tea before you’ve even been in the house for a full minute.” Lily’s father, Malcolm Evans, doesn’t walk up to them so much as he shuffles carefully along. He’s wearing a nice buttoned shirt, too; just like Lily, it’s the same shade of bottle green as Lily’s shirt, though he has brown eyes instead. His trousers are like a suit’s, properly pressed, and his shoes look nice, but he isn’t wearing a jacket or tie or anything else. Muggles really are a lot less formal, even when they’re dressing up a bit.

“Dad!” Lily isn’t just greeting her father. She sounds horrified. “You told me it wasn’t that bad!”

“I didn’t want you worrying about me while you were off being involved in that war,” Mr. Evans retorts. “And it’s still not that bad. Give it another six months, and then we’ll talk about how bad things are.”

James does a bad job of not staring at Mr. Evans. He looks so much older than Mrs. Evans, and they’re supposed to be the same bloody age! Mr. Evans has wispy white hair, and not much left of it, either. Golden brown eyes shine out from a whiskery face that could use a shave, but his stooped posture, the shuffling walk, and the gaunt look to his face—Malcolm Evans is in a bad way that makes James want to panic and Apparate him directly to St. Mungo’s.

Mr. Evans doesn’t seem to give a damn about his apparent frailness, either. He greets James and Sirius both with a back-pounding hug that leaves Sirius visibly winded, and James wondering if he’s going to have bruises on his back in the morning. “I’ve been wanting to meet you two for quite a while now. Letters aren’t ever enough to really get to know somebody, though you’ve both been awfully polite about writing to me and my Jane since Lily started dating you two.”

“Wait.” Sirius stares at Lily in disbelief while James considers the benefits of turning deer and hiding in the woods. “I thought we were coming here to tell them we were dating?”

Lily gives Sirius her special smug, “You’re an idiot and I love you anyway,” look. “I might’ve lied a bit about that.”

“Merlin, woman,” James mutters, but he’s smiling. This might go better than he thought it would.

“Lily’s been filling our ears with every bit of culture about Wizarding Britain she could pick up since she first got a Hogwarts letter, and even sommat before that thanks to young Severus.” Mr. Evans pauses, looking a bit sad. “Still wish he’d come by again. I know you had a falling out, Lily, but he’s a good lad.”

“You knew—you know Snape?” Sirius asks, rather bug-eyed.

“Of course we do,” Mrs. Evans answers. “He’s been a guest of ours so many times, and that started before any Hogwarts letter. Of course, magic wasn’t completely unfamiliar. It just tends to skip so many generations on Malcolm’s side of the family that they’re all considered Muggle-borns.”

James glances at Lily. “You had a wizard relative? You never said!”

Lily shrugs. “I didn’t get to meet Dad’s mum. Grandmother Rose died when I was still a baby, but it meant Mum and Dad didn’t panic when the accidental magic started.”

“My mother, she didn’t go to your Hogwarts,” Mr. Evans explains. “She was just as much a witch as Lily, but she learned what she did on her own. It costs money to go to Hogwarts, you know, and money wasn’t something the family had.”

“But—Hogwarts has scholarships.” Sirius hesitates. “Doesn’t it? I have to admit, my family has enough gold to choke a dozen dragons, so I didn’t need to worry it, but I thought Hogwarts wanted to make certain everyone had a fair shake at learning magic.”

Mr. Evans seems to chew on the inside of his lower lip, thinking it over, before he answers. “That war you lot are fighting right now, about who should and shouldn’t be living in Wizarding Britain. Those ideas about who’s proper and who isn’t aren’t new, son. My mother was born in 1884. It didn’t matter that her name was Ravensloft, which Mum always said is supposed to be in your wizarding history books—she was Muggle-born, and she was poor. If that scholarship program existed in 1895, she wasn’t one of those it was offered to.”

“Oh.” It seems like a stupid response, but James can’t think of anything else to say. His dad was born in 1929. The scholarship existed then, and was granted to Muggle-borns, or Monty Potter wouldn’t have had to share Hogwarts years with fucking Voldemort.

“We’ll talk more over Jane’s tea, which is just how she plotted it,” Mr. Evans says. “I’d imagine you’re more than ready to get the scent of train off your backs.”

“As if you didn’t help with the plotting.” Mrs. Evans gives her husband a smile that’s both smug and fond. It reminds James of how Lily sometimes looks at them, and it makes his heart beat wildly with affection at the same time as nervous sweat breaks out on his palms. “He’s right, though. You three go upstairs and wash up, first, and then come straight back to the kitchen.”

The foyer and their walk through the sitting room—living room?—and the trip up the stairs isn’t much different from walking through a wizard’s house. The Evans’ house is smaller, and reminds him a bit of the family cottage in Godric’s Hollow, though the cottage still has lanterns and candles instead of glass lightbulbs and electrical outlets. (Lily already told Sirius not to stick anything into the electrical outlets unless he wanted to die young _and_ stupid.)

The only standout is the telly, but James has seen one of those before, too. He suspects this one is newer than the television they show off in Muggle Studies, and unlike that one, probably displays proper moving pictures. Maybe this won’t be their first visit to Lily’s house, and James will finally find out if Professor Rhodes was full of shit or not.

The bathroom is bog standard, too: sink, hot and cold water taps, drain with a plug for it, mirror that opens up to reveal your usual sort of bathroom supplies, bathtub, toilet. A lot of things are in plastic bottles instead of glass, which James thinks is daft, but otherwise…it’s a bathroom. The only thing that startles him is picking up the plugged-in black device with its odd, curved silver cheese-grater-looking top, clicking the only button, and nearly throwing the suddenly buzzing device through the window. “Shit what the fuck!”

“It’s an electric shaver,” Lily says through the door, sounding like she’s on the verge of laughing at him. Sirius is right behind her, muffled voice saying something about how he wants to see the shaver-thing, too.

James turns off the buzzing shaver thing and looks it over again. “How?”

“You turn it on and press the silver part with all of those holes against your face. There are sharp blades underneath that whack off any of the hair that goes through the holes, and the silver cover keeps you from cutting yourself. It’s a lot easier these days for Dad to use one of those instead of a safety razor.”

That doesn’t sound so bad. There are probably a number of older wizards who might like this sort of thing instead of just giving up and growing a beard. “Do you use one of these?”

“Two problems with that, Potter,” Lily drawls. James grins as he puts the electric shaver back where he found it. “First: those won’t work in magic-centric places. Second: have you ever wondered why my legs are fuzz free?”

“Not really. I just assumed it’s because they’re as gorgeous as the rest of you.”

“Smooth, mate,” Sirius assures him, and then cackles for good measure, because James’s boyfriend is an unapologetic wanker.

“I use a topical potion,” Lily says. “Takes the hair off and keeps it off unless you use a different topical potion to make the hair grow again. Women shaving their legs and armpits is an awful, stupid cultural conception, by the way.”

“Wait, girls shave their pits, too?” Sirius asks in disbelief. James decides he’s going to use the bloody toilet and ignore them, or they’ll be having odd conversations through the door until it’s long past teatime and Jane is serving them supper.

James shakes his head at himself in the mirror as he washes his hands. Wizards are so noses-in-the-air about Muggle things, but they sure didn’t have any trouble adopting newspapers, the wireless, mirrors made of glass instead of silver, toothbrushes, and indoor plumbing. Honestly, Potter Manor’s plumbing needs a bit of an update after seeing that flush lever on the toilet. The bathrooms at home still have overhead pull-chains like the ones in the commodes at the public Ministry entrance. He still thinks their bathtub is better than this one, even if it’s a good long bit of white-painted cast iron. Wide and long copper tubs make for awesome baths, and at least the manor was updated to have showers after those were introduced at Hogwarts.

Sirius shoves his way past him when James opens the door. “You take too sodding long!” he shouts.

“I did not. Did I?”

Lily smiles at him from over her shoulder, but she’s walking down the hall. “Just a bit. Distracted much?”

“It’s the electric shaver’s fault,” James says. “Where are we going?”

“We, kemosabe?” Lily asks, which is a nonsense word that she’s always refused to explain. It used to drive James mental, because he heard Snape use it, too, so it has to mean _something!_

“Well, yeah. I guess.”

Lily is definitely smirking. “I thought gentlemen Pure-bloods were supposed to stay out of a lady’s bedroom?”

James stops walking so fast he nearly falls on his face. “Yeah, sorry. You go ahead.”

“I’m kidding. Come on.” Lily disappears around the corner of an open doorway. James takes a fortifying breath and follows her.

Lily’s bedroom is a lot like his, the room of a kid caught right before adulthood could really take hold. He’s been too busy to change his, and given what he and Sirius have been plotting, it hasn’t seemed all that important, anyway. Lily’s walls are a pale blue-purple color instead of white, and she has different posters. No pin-ups like Sirius used to prefer, but maybe music groups count as pin-ups? The one of David Bowie has the man dressed in an outfit that is skin-tight. Maybe this Bowie bloke is wearing something form-fitting at the crotch, because James doesn’t know how those particular details wouldn’t be stark visible otherwise.

“Who’s David Bowie?”

“He’s Ziggy Stardust,” Lily says, which is a completely useless answer until she puts an album into his hands. The bloke on the cover is standing on a street at night. He looks normal compared to the bloke on the poster. “This one is sort of rock opera. It’s glam rock. Wizarding Britain hasn’t caught up to that yet, and I’m sort of afraid of what the results will be when they do.”

“Got it.” James looks at the other records that are standing neatly in a row on a set of shelves full of wizarding books and textbooks, Muggle fiction and Muggle textbooks, and encyclopedias from both sides of the magical divide. “Hey, Queen! Sirius really misses the albums he had to leave behind at Grimmauld Place. Can we take that one with us?”

Lily briefly rests her fingertip on the album in question. “Yeah.” Her voice is suddenly too quiet. “I was thinking of maybe taking my turntable and all of my vinyl with me, but then it’s real. I’ll really have moved out of my house, and after that it’s just Mum and Dad’s place.”

“You’ve been living with Mary MacDonald since we graduated,” James points out.

“Yes, but…except for us having to squabble over the one bathroom in her flat, that’s not much different from Hogwarts. Most of my clothes are still here, too. Pictures, letters…” Lily bites her lip. “I didn’t get rid of anything Severus ever gave to me.”

“Should I be jealous?” James asks, only half-joking. He’s not jealous when it’s Sirius and Lily, because it’s also Sirius and James, and James and Lily, and he has nothing to be jealous of. Lily and Snape, though—that is not on. For several dozen reasons.

“No. I think Severus might be like one of my cousins. Gay,” she explains, rolling her eyes when James just gives her a clueless look. “Not interested in girls. He spent a lot more time looking at my Bowie poster than I have, that’s for sure.”

“Oh.” James has lost count of the number of times he’s felt daft about something today. “Do you think Snape and Regulus ever…you know?”

Lily snorts and coughs before she begins laughing so hard, she nearly drops the album she’s holding. “Oh, God, no!” she gasps out. “Severus told me in fourth year that he wouldn’t do it, because then he’d have to deal with Sirius all the time, so there was no way in hell, even if Regulus had been his type!”

“Oh, thank _GOD!_ ” Sirius bursts out from behind James, causing James to levitate himself off the floor and nearly try to kill Sirius Black with Ziggy Stardust.

James bends over with his hand on his chest. “You wanker!”

“Sorry,” Sirius apologizes, looking contrite. “Didn’t mean to jump you, Prongs. I’m just relieved I don’t have to worry about my baby brother beyond the Death Eater stupidity.”

“Regulus is gay?” Lily asks. She still says _gay_ like it’s hush, a secret that’s meant to stay that way. She explained once that it’s because Muggles really do not get same-sex relationships or polyamory (James loves that term), and her parents were very rare exceptions to the hate-spew that usually follows when someone Muggle says that they’re gay or lesbian or bisexual or whatever.

Sirius shrugs. “No idea. Want to go downstairs? We hang out too long, your mum might—ooh, Queen!” He darts right to the records and pulls it off the shelf, practically drooling.

Lily gives James the Control-The-Dog look. James shrugs; he did warn her.

It’s the kitchen that really highlights the big differences between wizards and Muggles, and James isn’t ashamed of the fact that he stares at everything. Besides, Sirius is staring, too, and the Evans seem more bemused by the staring than insulted. The range that heats the tea kettle has a fire-burning hob, too, but it’s fed by a line of some sort of flammable gas, which is awesome. The cold store hums all the time, occasionally making a click that makes it hum louder before it goes back to sounding content again. The Muggle cold store, the refrigerator, is also _cooled_ by gas, a different type than the gas that fires the range hobs. James really wants to know why one gas makes fire and the other one makes ice, but later. He and Sirius will probably drive Lily to madness with how many questions they’ll probably ask after this.

Tea, scones, preserves, and cream need no explanation. He’s a Pure-blood wizard, not a heathen.

“So!” Jane puts down her tea and somehow manages to pin Sirius and James with a stern look at the same time, and that takes real talent. “Lily’s letters have been sparse lately. We know it’s because of the war, but it means we don’t know a lot of what you’ve all been getting up to.”

“My wife means that she wants to know your intentions for our baby girl,” Malcolm says in a wry voice. “She’ll beat around the bush, but I’d rather just come out with it.”

“You go fishing for information, Malcolm Evans! You don’t hit people with bricks to get it!” Jane snaps, and Malcolm smiles at his wife, calm and unrepentant.

Jane sighs and rolls her eyes. “All right. Fine. What are those intentions, then? How far has this relationship progressed? Are you using birth control?”

“MUM!” Lily blushes right before she covers her eyes with her hands. “It’s a monthly potion!”

“Birth control’s not just about babies, young lady,” Jane says sternly. “It’s about diseases, too!”

Sirius is outraged. “What? I may be a Black, but I’m not diseased—”

“Shut up, Padfoot.” James tries to smile at Lily’s parents, but it feels more like an awkward grimace. “Uh, there are, uhm. Potions. For that, too. If it had ever been an issue. Which it hasn’t! Not ever! Nope. Not that. And, uh…not that I’d want it to happen, but uhm…abortions are done by potion, too. Just in—just in case. It’s usually the underage kids who weren’t paying attention in Madam Pomfrey’s lectures who need that sort of thing, though.”

“I’m not Catholic; I won’t be jumping all over you for mentioning abortions,” Jane says, though Malcolm looks thoughtful. Not mad, just…thoughtful. James has no idea what being Catholic has to do with abortions, anyway. “Thank you for being honest.”

“Thank you for making this one of the most embarrassing teas in my entire _life_ ,” Lily moans.

“You’re young, sweetheart,” Malcolm says, reaching over to pat Lily’s shoulder. “Trust me, you’ve plenty of time yet to have far more embarrassing afternoon teas than this.” Lily groans again and nearly puts her hair in her plate when she thumps her head down on the table. James lifts up a thick strand of fire-red hair and moves it away from the cream. Malcolm gives him a look right afterwards that is just—it’s utterly _soft_ , is all James can think of to describe it. It makes James feel like he’s done something that’s right, not just practical.

“You’re eighteen, and I know you’re an adult, but a mother wants to make sure her child is being safe,” Jane says primly to her groaning daughter. “I don’t know how a relationship between three people can really work out, though.”

“Well…it’s not just…” Sirius pulls a face. “It’s not just us being in love with her. It’s all three of us being in love with each other. James and I, James and Lily, Lily and I. It’s all mutual. There have been triad marriages in Wizarding Britain where it’s not all mutual, when it’s two loving one or one loving two, and everyone involved is willing to put up with it, but that’s not us.”

“Finally,” Malcolm says, grinning. “The L-word has been spoken. I was wondering how long you lot were going to sit on that.”

“Yeah…” James swallows. The Muggles aren’t fetching any fire-arms, so it’s still fine. “We hadn’t really gotten to that part, had we?”

“At least you two idiots had told _me_ already, or this would be even more awkward than it already is,” Lily says to the table.

“If you three were married, or had kids, or both, how does the fathering work?” Jane has her head tilted to one side. “I know there is always biology, but…well, you almost always know who your mother was, but sometimes your father can be a mystery even if there are papers saying who that’s supposed to be.”

“Don’t look at me,” James complains at Sirius after he does exactly that. “You know this stuff better than I do. Nobody in my family knows if a Potter has ever been involved in a tri-marriage before!”

“Okay, okay.” Sirius frowns, scratches his chin, and then sits up straight. “In any tri-marriage, each family involved is usually worried about having an heir for their family line. That’s definitely a Black concern, and a lot of Pure-blood concerns, though Lily says it’s not as much of a thing for Muggles.”

“Not really,” Malcolm says. “I know there are more Evans cousins out there, so I’m not fussed.”

“That’s…kind of nice, actually.” Sirius sighs. “For us, it’s every branch of the family having that heir, or you stand to lose something. Me, I’m not likely to get anything from my parents, and good riddance, but we’re running out of Sane Blacks. I wouldn’t mind making certain there are more of us around.”

“It’s higher stakes for me,” James admits, which gains him far too much attention from everyone. “I’m literally the last magical Potter that has a chance of having kids. Mum and Dad, Uncle Charles and Aunt Dorea—they’re all still young enough that they haven’t given up. But they’ve been trying for decades, and Aunt Dorea knows she’s just about out of time. Mum wasn’t sure she and Dad would be able to have me until it finally happened. The few Potter cousins we have left—the ones who were interested in kids all sort of got shafted on that front. Cousin Walter was married to Judith Dumbledore—”

“I thought there weren’t any other Dumbledores left except for Albus and Aberforth?” Sirius interrupts, frowning.

“Not now, there aren’t,” James replies. “She would’ve been their cousin, I think.”

“Keep going; some of us aren’t walking Pure-blood genealogy textbooks,” Lily says. At least she isn’t trying to merge her face with the table any longer.

“Right, uh—Walter and his brother Gilbert were born sterile, or something, so Walter and Judith had to, well, find other means for having a baby together. But she died, some sort of complication from premature labor I’ve never really heard the specifics on, and the baby died with her. Cousin Gilbert might as well have decided to be a monk. Cousin Robert—he’s gone now—he was married to a Longbottom named Albert, a younger brother to my Cousin Joseph’s wife Kezia, but they didn’t want kids. Cousin Olivia was married and had a son, but he died young, and then her husband died in the European Wizarding War before they knew if they’d ever have another baby.”

“What happened to the little one?” Jane asks in a soft voice.

“Polio. One of those diseases stupid wizards think they’re immune to even though we’re really not,” James adds. “I’ve had all of those childhood immunizations that Muggle kids get, because my parents weren’t daft.”

“I had to go get them after I turned seventeen. Needles are terrible,” Sirius whinges.

“You got a lolly afterwards. You can cope,” James retorts. “Anyway, I _do_ need an heir, or my entire family is gone. Magical adoption is a possibility, but we’re not—nobody is one hundred percent clear on how that works any longer. I don’t want to gain a kid by guesswork, y’know?”

“But we do still know how to do a properly binding magical marriage,” Sirius says. “Not a lot of wizards go for it anymore, probably because they’re Pure-blood tossers who are too worried about how difficult it would be to get a divorce. A magical marriage means it isn’t just ink on paper. Magically and legally, any kid in a tri-marriage belongs to all three parents. They can even pick up magical traits from someone who wasn’t actually their dad.”

Lily bites her lip. “That sounds nice. It sounds _equal_.” James feels a guilty twinge; he didn’t even know Lily was worried about that. They should have talked about how magic in a triad marriage works with Lily ages ago. Sometimes it’s still so easy to forget that Lily doesn’t just know these things.

Jane nods. “It does. Much better than crossing your fingers and saying a prayer that the paperwork is enough.”

“Mum and Dad have a binding magical marriage,” James tells them. “My Uncle Charles and Aunt Dorea, Gran and Granddad, too. Gran said if Granddad wasn’t willing to do the marriage proper, she was walking, and he could go find someone _else_ to marry. Fortunately, Granddad was just fine with the idea.”

“I don’t know if my parents added magic to their ceremony, and I really don’t want to know,” Sirius says flatly, but then he perks up again. “But I’d rather it be that. Some people think a magically bonded marriage, it can…I dunno. Make things easier. That you’re less likely to misunderstand each other. I’m a bloody idiot, so I like the idea of having a built-in interpreter for when I bugger things up.”

Malcolm glances at Jane before facing them again. “You boys sound like you’re already in this for the long haul.”

“Yeah…” James rests his hand on his thigh, out of view, and concentrates until he’s wandlessly called the box in his jacket pocket to his hand. Then he kicks Sirius as a hint before clearing his throat. “My grandmother is Jat Hindu. Her family was from East Punjab before they did away with East Punjab entirely, so now she tells people the family is from Haryana. Anyway, that means I’m one-quarter Jat, one-eighth Jewish, with a Protestant dad who was raised by my grandfather to observe the old magical holidays, too. I grew up with some interesting ideas on what the yearly holidays are supposed to be like. Personally, I think it’s better that way.

“Gran’s family had only been in Britain for two generations before she was born, so they were, er, particular. Gran was the first person to marry outside the Hindu community those families had built up in Wizarding Britain, and that was a _huge_ deal in those days. In Wizarding Britain, it was a huge deal because of who Gran was marrying. My great-uncle wasn’t born until years afterward, so at the time, Granddad was _the_ presumed heir for the family, because it was his dad who was running the show.

“Both of my grandparents had a learning curve, figuring out how to mix a Jat courtship with an English Pure-blooded one, but there are a couple of traditions from Gran’s people that it was practically law that you didn’t mess about with. Some of it they were glad to wave aside, like how the bride’s family had to practically bankrupt themselves to see their daughters married off due to the expected dowry. A bride’s dowry is still a thing for them—they just changed it so that there are other options aside from drowning someone in Galleons. Oh, and none of the families here in Britain will tell their daughters that they can’t come home if the marriage ends up being awful. They’re usually too busy suing the offending spouse for damages and the return of everything belonging to the soon-to-be-ex-bride, including whatever the dowry was agreed to be—which the goblins bloody well love. They have a thing about taking back what’s rightfully theirs.”

“What else were they supposed to not ignore from the Jat traditions?” Jane asks, her green eyes bright with curiosity. Lily’s curious intensity is just like that.

“A bride’s family is usually expected to perform any rituals on their side that the family indulges in for marriages before the wedding. They make or purchase the bride’s wedding dress. They host a party for the groom’s family to attend, though that one is becoming less of a bride-only thing and more of both families smashing together in the same building to see what fits and what doesn’t while eating, drinking, and celebrating the impending marriage. Not everywhere and not everyone, not yet, but it’s happening. And there is…uh…one more.”

James’s throat tries to close up on him. No, not allowed. He is a Potter, and he can do this, no matter how terrified he is right now. He’s fallen off his broom, broken limbs, nearly died in battle more than once, and this is absolutely top of the list for terrifying.

“Make a show of it?” Sirius asks. He’s grinning, the bastard.

“We’re Marauders. All of it’s a show,” James replies, and just like that, it’s easier. He loves Remus and Peter like brothers, but there’s a reason why Sirius has always been first.

James and Sirius stand up together, bowing at the waist—at Lily. She makes a sort of strangled gasping sound, because she knows what that signals. Muggles might get down on one knee, but the bow of respect is so much older.

They even manage to time it so they’re both holding out wooden boxes and opening them together. “So, we’re stupid, and we proved it for five straight years before sort of getting our act together,” Sirius begins.

“And neither of us can promise not to be stupid again in the future, but we can promise that when it comes to you—you come first, Lily. You always will,” James says. Equal, the three of them. They’re each others’ first _everythings._

“Marry us, Lils?” Sirius asks, his voice wavering. “I mean, James and I already asked each other and said yes, so now you’re late to the party.”

Lily sniffles. “I’m going to strangle you both. Absolutely kick your arses.”

James lifts his head from where he’s still bent over. Lily’s eyes are too bright, the end of her nose is red, and crying is impending. “Is that a no, a yes, or a double-yes?”

“It’s a triple yes, you complete arse,” Lily whispers, and then knocks over her own chair to leap at them. James ends up with Lily’s left arm around his neck in a stranglehold, his head pressed against Sirius’s, as Lily hugs them both together. James holds the box up, worried he’ll drop it and lose its contents underneath the humming cold store refrigerator thing.

Sirius sounds as if Lily might literally be strangling him. “Can we put the rings on you now? Because I think I’m about to pass out.”

“Yes, yes, yes, do it, now, I want to know what the Marauders have wrought.” Lily releases them only to grin like a madwoman. God, James loves this woman.

Sirius puts his ring on Lily first. James insisted on that, because Padfoot too often has moments of thinking he’s this weird blockade between Lily and James instead of being part of the bloody whole. The ring has a delicate-looking thin band, just like the one James picked, but Sirius’s choice is white gold with a small, perfect diamond. The one James slides onto Lily’s left ring finger to sit against the diamond is yellow gold, with a stone the same size as the diamond. He had to search for it on three blasted continents, but he finally found the perfect clear-cut Colombian emerald to match the green fire in Lily’s eyes.

Lily looks down at her hand and its two new rings, sniffling again. “It’s a good thing they’re so thin, but if I have to wear two wedding bands, I won’t be able to bend my finger!”

“No, that one is so much easier,” Sirius says. “The wedding bands are a matched set for the three of us, and I’d go mad if I had to cope with another oversized ring on my finger. The two engagement rings thing is just us wanting to, you know, indulge you. Because you deserve it.”

That gets Sirius throttled by another hug. James watches, smiling, and gives serious consideration about crying, too. Then he doesn’t get the chance, because Jane Evans has captured him and he’s doomed.

“You darling boy,” Jane whispers in his ear. “Now I know you’ll always look after her.”

“Yeah, I will. I promise,” James replies, and Jane releases him to go hug Sirius.

Hugging Malcolm just drives home how thin he is. “I—can anything be done?” James whispers. He’s probably prying, but this isn’t age that’s made Lily’s Dad so thin. This is sickness.

“Thanks for asking, but it’s black lung, son,” Malcolm says, just as quiet. “Nothing anyone can do about that at this point, not with all the magic in the world. Wasn’t anything that could be done a decade ago, either, but some things…”

Malcolm steps out of the hug and gazes at Lily, who is looking at her rings again while bouncing in place. “Some things are worth paying this sort of price.” James nods, feeling like he was just kicked in the chest.

 _Yeah_ , James thinks while watching Jane, Sirius, and Lily. _Some things really are worth dying for._

James won’t realize what he and Sirius did by way of those rings, not for a while. He’ll figure out the first part while staring at the emerald stone and gold band on his wife’s left hand as Albus Dumbledore tells them all about the features and colors of his damned Harry-tracking device. James will think about it again after Edward is born, as their second child grows older and his infant blue eyes turn grey. Edward doesn’t have the Black family eyes, not quite, but the answer has been there since nineteenth November 1978, the day Sirius slid an engagement ring onto Lily’s finger.

The ring’s delicate band isn’t the more typical bright silver of white gold, but a pale, steely grey.

* * * *

Lucretia Prewett greets Salazar with a hug and an entire litre of Firewhiskey. “We got it!”

“An excess of flaming whiskey?” Salazar responds, handing the bottle off to Bastion. At least Bastion looks pleased to be holding that much liquor. “Good gods, man, it isn’t as if we aren’t meeting in a pub!”

Bastion snorts. “Tom waters down the Firewhiskey unless he knows you, Saul. Is there another glass, ma’am?”

“Yes.” Lucretia slides an upside-down, empty shot glass across the table for Bastion to catch. “And we’ve another arrest, that’s what! For Merlin’s sake, where have you been?” Lucretia asks, pouring herself a shot from an open bottle with a third of its contents missing.

“Spying on one of the most annoying bastards to ever walk this earth.” Salazar decides there isn’t a thing wrong with slumping down in a chair. The room is warded, sealed, and private, and he is with allies. “That curse. That fucking Taboo Curse!”

Nizar’s portrait was utterly blindsided by the notion of a Taboo Curse being used during this war. Neither of them had forewarning that there was once a real reason all of Wizarding Britain was afraid to say Voldemort’s name!

Lucretia pours herself another drink. “I hated hearing You-Know-Who before this, like his name was so bloody terrifying. Now that phrase is everywhere, and we don’t even have a choice in the matter! What a fine bloody New Year’s gift Himself gave us!”

“Bloody was possibly correct,” Bastion points out after clearing two shots. “Hoo, that always burns. You-Know-Who had to have gotten the power to cast an island-wide curse from somewhere.”

“Like the ward-breaking, then,” Lucretia says, pulling a face. “Why do you Underground sorts bring me such lovely presents?”

“Because you and Scrimgeour are smarter than Barty Crouch Senior,” Bastion retorts. “Honestly, I’m offended that the man is my uncle.”

Lucretia regards Bastion in surprise. “Well, I can’t say as I blame Caspar very much for looking elsewhere for intimacy. My cousin Charis was Bellatrix’s inspiration. I am sorry for your father’s death, though. Caspar was a good man.”

Bastion scowls. “He was a good man if you were a witch or a wizard, but not if you were his dirty little secret from an affair the illustrious Barty Senior would have tried to crucify his own brother for having. But I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Noted, and I don’t like Barty, either. Sexist prig,” Lucretia says, and instantly wins back Bastion’s favor. “Well! Any other news?”

“Stop drinking long enough to tell me who you’ve arrested before you’re too pissed to remember their name,” Salazar replies dryly.

“Oh! Right. Yes. Albert Fawley, that’s who!” Lucretia exclaims, grinning. “And Gillian Smith Rowle and Marcus Peebles with him!”

Bastion raises an eyebrow as he glances at Salazar. “That explains the mood Gamelinus was in, then. He was too busy sulking to explain that the M.L.E. arrested his wife.”

“The blasted sod might actually have to parent his children without expecting a _woman_ to perform her _wifely duties_ without his _manly input_ ,” Lucretia spits, and pours another shot. “Yes, I’m off duty until tomorrow evening, and I’m owed this, dammit!”

“I wonder if Joyce Bletchley Fawley will find the news of her husband’s arrest to be to her taste,” Salazar says.

“Christina certainly will. It means her father won’t try to muck about with her engagement to Lysander Bones any longer.” Bastion pours a shot and matches Lucretia for the next one. Salazar thinks about joining them, but they’re not meant to deal with the annoyingly dubbed You-Know-Who at noon tomorrow. “Alex will probably be asked to take the Fawley seat in the Wizengamot in his father’s place. Selene will just love it, and by that I mean she’ll love having her husband out of the house more often.”

“Alex Fawley is certainly quite…irritating.” There are better words, but Salazar isn’t yet able to happily call him a corpse. “Will you be able to hold them?” Not even a Death Eater deserves Azkaban, but there is nowhere else in Wizarding Britain to imprison a wizard. The European countries observing the Statute of Secrecy have already refused to house any of Wizarding Britain’s prisoners. Too many are busy trying to rid themselves of Death Eaters that have either spread the word on Voldemort’s behalf, or decided that the Dark Lord had an excellent idea and formed groups of their own.

“Fawley and Rowle? Absolutely,” Lucretia answers. “They’ll be joining Frobisher, Hooper, Prewett, McLaggen, and Macnair in Azkaban. Peebles is the doubtful one. He has sympathy on his side for being a newlywed, and for what he claimed during interrogation.”

“Another one for Imperius Curse, I take it?” Salazar isn’t surprised by that any longer. He’s disgusted that there is enough of a remaining Death Eater majority that anyone who claims the curse, whether there is evidence or not, is voted Not Guilty and released.

“Oh, he went a bit further than that.” Lucretia finally looses some of her mad cheer. “The fucking prick declared that his newly wedded _wife_ is the one who placed him under the Imperius Curse, beginning in 1975, so that not only would he agree to marry her, he would agree to take Vol—dammit! So that he would take You-Know-Who’s Dark Mark.”

Salazar stares at Lucretia. “Dorothia Stimpson. Using the Tempero Curse. Her.”

Bastion pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ll give you that she’s loyal to You-Know-Who, but a Squib could outperform that woman with a wand! She doesn’t have the focus to maintain the Imperius Curse for four years!”

“I know that, and you know that. Most of the bloody M.L.E. knows that, but Barty already wrote up the orders for her arrest if she is sighted in Wizarding Britain. All it will take is the Dark Mark on her arm to convict her.” Lucretia sighs. “Peebles, however, is very good at batting his eyelashes and exclaiming how he still _loves_ his wife and of course he forgives her, and hopes that she will turn herself in like a proper witch.”

“No, I can’t take it any longer. That broke me.” Salazar steals Bastion’s full glass. “I’ll need to sober up before noon, but I have to wash those words out of my mind before they linger overlong and begin to rot.”


	20. We Shall All Be Changed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imbolc 1979.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flail-read by @norcumii who has put up with a vast number of Feels throughout Part IX and is one hell of an awesome trooper (fear her)
> 
> Also: I'M REALLY SORRY PLEASE DO NOT MURDER ME

James Potter wakes late at night on the last day of January 1979, feeling like…like…something. No matter how many times he tries to articulate it later, the only ones who understand are Dad and Granddad. He doesn’t have the words, and neither do they, but it’s not something they need. Not once James finds out what happened.

“James?” Lily’s voice is a tired mumble. “Why’re you sitting up?”

“Uh—something’s…I need to go home. I think.” James turns around and bends down to give Lily a quick kiss on the forehead before she decides to sit up, too. “You guys stay and sleep. It was a late night in a shit string of them.”

“I think I’ve been pinned under Padfoot, anyway,” Lily says, smiling. James glances down, his eyes now adjusted enough to the dark to make out the large black Newfoundland that passed out over Lily’s legs. “Think he wanted to make sure we didn’t go anywhere.”

“Just kick him off when your legs start going numb. That’s what I do.” James gives Lily another quick kiss. “Be back soon.” He ruffles Padfoot’s ears as he leaves the bed, but Sirius is so out of it that all he does is release a doggy snore. War isn’t all that great for sleep, even if you’re an Animagus dog who can sleep anywhere.

Animagus deer do _not_ sleep anywhere. If anything, James is stuck with such a case of hypervigilance that he sometimes wonders if he’ll ever sleep soundly again. It wasn’t bad before they graduated, just made him a light sleeper, but after? Completely buggered…figuratively and literally, but he could’ve done without the figurative part.

He dresses in the dark, glad that he’s so used to doing so. Now that he’s away from the double bed he, Sirius, and Lily somehow all sleep on at the same time without tying themselves in a knot, a sense of urgency crawling under his skin. He snatches up his wand and only steps far enough from the door of Sirius’s flat to get beyond the reach of the wards before he’s Apparating.

In Godric’s Hollow, the wind is howling with all of the might of a raging winter storm. James swears in shock and casts quick warming charms on his clothes and trainers, then _Impervius_ on his glasses. If it starts raining to go with the wind, he needs to be able to sodding well see what he’s doing!

James glances around, frowning. The village, except for the wind, is fine. He Apparates again and ends up just outside the wards for the family manor, where candles and torchlight illuminate the ground floor and first storey. The family’s awake. That’s good, because he needs someone to bloody well explain—

A solid body strikes James and lands him in the dirt, holding him down. James swears again and struggles to get a tighter grip on his wand before he’s distracted by the green bloom of light that illuminates the place where he’d just been standing. “Oh, _shit!_ ”

“Not after that, they won’t,” his attacker-turned-rescuer growls. James knows that voice, but he can’t put a name to it, not even when they shout, “ _¡Maldición de la muerte!_ ”

James looks up just in time to see the light of a cast _Avada Kedavra_ strike a black-cloaked and masked Death Eater in the chest. They fall down as James is yanked up onto his feet, deflecting the violet-edged curse cast by a Death Eater who’d been creeping up behind him.

“Have you learned _nothing_ from Alastor Moody?” the man yells. He has silvered black hair and skin that James is certain should be a darker bronze, like Gran. He’s dressed fully Muggle, but he’s exchanging furious spells with a third Death Eater while James tangles with the second. “Constant fucking vigilance!”

“Oh, I’m _so_ fucking sorry!” James shouts back, casting _Reducto_ followed by a stunner that the Death Eater doesn’t deflect, too busy worried about the earth exploding at their feet. “I was a bit distracted by—by something!”

“Excellent excuse! I’m certain it would have looked lovely on your gravestone.”

James finds himself grinning. “It’s not nearly as stupid as some of the shit I’ve spouted, believe me.”

“Oh, I can believe it all too easily. Some of it I’ve even heard for myself!” He turns around, his Death Eater on the ground and bound by _Incarcerous._ “You might wish to deal with that one before they decide to stand back up.”

James binds the second Death Eater without looking, because now it’s coming to him. It’s that black leather jacket, the one he thought Sirius would drool over with unrestrained, messy, dog-slobber envy. “Saul?”

Saul Luiz doesn’t seem to believe in saying hello. “Are you all right?”

James nods. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just—”

“Oh, for God’s sake. Really? You didn’t leave any for me? I’m going to be sore about this for the entire weekend.”

James whirls around, filled with so much relief it’s nauseating. He shouldn’t even feel that way. Dad was safe behind the wards! James was the one who might’ve ended up dying in really stupid fashion.

He still feels uneasy, though. He still feels like something’s wrong.

“Monty!” Saul sounds as relieved as James feels. “Is everyone all right?”

“Yes, we’re fine. I was just on my way out to make certain it wasn’t James!” Dad responds, pulling on a heavier robe as he emerges from the manor. One of the two double doors is standing open, spilling warm light out onto the portico.

“It’s not me! I don’t even know what’s going on, but I might’ve—wait.” James will readily admit he isn’t the smartest wizard in Britain, but that just made all of his instincts sit up and take notice. “If there aren’t any Death Eaters left here, and something’s still wrong…”

Saul gives James a brief glance of approval before he looks back at Monty. “They know what they’re doing. That sort of magical noise would attract others as they seek out the most obvious target.”

“And if it’s not us, there is only one other place it can be.” Monty turns around. “DAD!”

Granddad pulls open the door the rest of the way, already dressed for Somerset’s weird, wild weather. He has his cane firmly gripped in one hand and his wand in the other. “I know. We need to move quickly.” He shuts the door and moves faster than James knows he’s comfortable with lately, all but skipping over the steps until his feet are on the stone path that leads to the manor.

“It has to be!” Dad sounds panicked. “We have to go to London, Dad!”

“Oh, gods.” Saul is staring in the direction of London, horrified. “It’s Imbolc. It’s after midnight. It’s Imbolc!”

“Take James!” Dad orders, grabbing hold of Granddad and Disapparating. James doesn’t even have a chance to argue that he’s capable of Apparating himself to London before Saul has done it for both of them. He’s also standing in front of James, the way he’s seen the older Aurors shield the trainees and Junior Aurors from danger they’re not yet ready for.

James is pretty sure that doesn’t matter much right now. Kensington House is on fire. His Aunt Dorea’s beautiful home, the one she was so proud of—

He lifts his wand at the same time that Saul does, two different spells blasting a Death Eater backwards into a parked car with enough force to leave a dent behind. The Death Eater lets out a gurgled moan and slumps to the ground. James doesn’t think that one is going to be going anywhere, possibly ever.

“Sal!”

James turns when Saul does, finding Dad and Granddad on the walkway in front of the house. Another Death Eater is on the ground. It’s kind of obvious that he’s dead, but Granddad has never once fucked about when it comes to this sort of thing.

It’s war. James has permission as an Auror that’s earned Junior Officer status to use the Killing Curse with legal immunity. He still won’t do it. Maybe war isn’t civilized, can’t be civilized, but he doesn’t want to be worse than the Death Eaters they’re supposed to be fighting.

“Sal, help me! He’s trying to go inside, and I might not be able to stop him!” Dad yells.

Saul is off like a shot before James realizes what that means. He runs for the walkway, already coughing on the smoke pouring out of broken windows. If Granddad is trying to get into the house, someone in there is still alive.

Now that he’s realized it, James can feel it, too. It’s a prickly awareness along his skin and singing in his blood.

Uncle Charles. He doesn’t know about Aunt Dorea, but Uncle Charles _has_ to be alive. “Dad, we’ve got to—”

“USE YOUR HEAD!” Dad shouts back. James flinches from the shock of it. He can count on two fingers the number of times Monty Potter has ever raised his voice like that.

“Bubble-Head Charm, at the least. Be sensible!” Saul chides, but he’s quieter. James thinks it’s because he’s too busy preparing to go into that house: Bubble-Head Charm, a smaller variant that just covers his nose and mouth; his clothes are wet; magical shielding is flaring above his sopping clothes and skin. “And for fuck’s sake, stay here before you give your father heart failure. Henry!”

“His name is Harry,” James mutters, which only causes Saul to roll his eyes. Granddad, for whatever reason, stopped struggling to escape Dad when he saw Saul. He’s prepared for fire in the same way, and catches a glowing rope made of magic when Saul tosses it over.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” Granddad asks Saul while tying the rope around his wrist.

“I could have gone quite a bit longer without repeating it,” Saul replies. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. I think—second storey,” Granddad says.

“Bloody hell,” Saul whispers in dismay, and then both of them vanish with that same silent Disapparition James first witnessed in 1975, nearly four years ago.

“Dad?”

Dad gestures for him to come over until James is close enough for Dad to grasp his robes, then his arm. “They’ll be fine,” Dad whispers. His face is painted orange in the light, his black robes shining amber. The fire jetting out from the first storey reflects in bright lines across his glasses. “They will.”

“Granddad’s eighty-six years old, Dad! You shouldn’t have let him go in there!”

“If it was you or Euphemia in there, Dad wouldn’t be able to stop me, either.” Dad coughs, swears under his breath, and casts the same variant of the Bubble-Head Charm that Saul and Granddad both were using. James is going to have words with Dad for holding out on him, but later.

“Yeah, if it was you—” James looks around in frustration. He hasn’t heard a single siren. “What the _hell_ , Dad? We’re in Kensington! Where’s the fucking fire brigade?”

Dad glances at him. James is startled to see tears already running down his face. “It’s the Notice-Me-Not spells, James. Unless your aunt or uncle lower them, Muggles won’t notice the house. Not until—not until the charms die.”

“Oh.” James feels his eyes burn. He suddenly has a magnificent need to sick up, but he can’t. He can’t run from this, not when the family needs him. “I’m calling for the Order.”

“The Ministry,” Dad corrects in a terse voice. “The M.L.E., James.”

“But Dad—”

“James.” Dad takes a pained-sounding breath. “This is a crime scene.”

“Oh.” James wants to argue that there are Aurors in the Order, but Dad’s right. This is an attack. This is—it’s fucking arson, at the very least.

James has to concentrate on Sirius and Lily, a memory of the two of them smiling at each other as they plot what they’re going to do to James next, before his Patronus will appear. It’s possibly his worst effort since he learned it. The stag tosses his head, misty and only mostly corporeal. “Go to—” James wracks his brain, trying to remember who’s on duty tonight. “Shit, never mind. Take this message to Rufus Scrimgeour: there has been an attack on the Potter residence in Kensington, the Kensington House. Two Death Eaters on the ground. The house is…” He swallows. Even through the Bubble-Head Charm, he can taste the acrid smoke of a burning home. “The house is burning. Possible deaths.” He gestures for his Patronus to leave, and it bounds away. Just saying the words made him start crying, and he can’t. He _can’t._

Saul and Granddad suddenly appear on the walkway again. The rope between them is dripping into vanishing fragments of magic. Black smears of ash stain their faces, their clothes, their hands.

James stares at the body Saul is carrying over his shoulder. Definitely a body, a small and slight one wrapped in a printed bedsheet.

“Away from the house!” Saul orders them. “The other side of the street. Now!”

James does as he’s bid without really thinking about it. The only other thing James does is stun the Death Eater they blasted into the car earlier when James sees their body twitch. Hell, no. They don’t get to walk away from this. The M.L.E. can drag them away.

Granddad is already laying out someone on the walkway opposite the house. Someone still alive.

That magnificent need to be sick is back. James swallows, feeling it burn the back of his throat.

Granddad gently grasps a hand that is stained red with blood. “Charles.”

Uncle Charles opens his eyes and smiles at Granddad. “’lo, big brother.”

James can barely hear his uncle’s voice. It’s so faint, and his body is—Charles Potter has been tortured. Lily’s been learning healing charms from Mum and anyone else capable of teaching them. James knows all the things an Auror is supposed to know about magical first aid.

He doesn’t know of anyone who could fix this.

“Idiot,” Granddad whispers, patting Charles’s hand. “What happened?”

“Death Eaters, Harry. Obviously.” Uncle Charles’s mouth works. “And—and _him_.”

James sucks in a shocked breath. Voldemort. You-Know-Who. He was here.

Oh, God. God and Merlin help them. They’ve always been a target, but not like this. This isn’t just a Death Eater’s raid. This is the Dark Lord _celebrating_ Imbolc, and he went after James’s family to do it.

James has always felt horrible for the other families slaughtered on Imbolc and Hallowe’en, but he never imagined this. Never once thought it would be his family the _Prophet_ would be writing about the next day.

“Him.” Granddad nods, a disturbing up-and-down jerk. “How? The wards—”

“Dorea answered the door. Someone she knew.” Uncle Charles coughs and starts gasping for air. His features contort in pain until Saul points his wand and murmurs something under his breath. The magic that leaves his carved wand is a soft-edged yellow, outshined and nearly invisible because of a raging inferno that used to be one of James’s favorite places.

“What did you do?” Dad asks as Granddad helps Uncle Charles to lie comfortably again.

“Paralyzed,” Saul answers, letting the roar of flame and crackling fire hide his words from Uncle Charles and Granddad. “It’s…there is…”

Dad squeezes his eyes shut, just for a moment, and nods. “Okay. Thank you. I didn’t want—”

“I know.” Saul sounds like someone who’s been hollowed out. It reminds James of how Arthur Weasley sounded when he’d visited Potter Manor three years ago, in July 1976, to tell the family about Ignatius Weasley’s death.

“Charles, I—oh, God, I hate to ask, but who—”

“S’all right, Harry,” Uncle Charles says, a corner of his mouth turning up. James is never going to forget that smile, not when Uncle Charles’s face is the wrong shape and his skin is covered in blood. “Whoever it was, it was too fast. I was…on the ground. Didn’t see them, Harry. Dorea, though. She did. She—she knew. Taunted that bitch niece of hers until Bellatrix lost her temper. You-Know-Who didn’t get to…” Uncles Charles lets out a wet chuckle. “He didn’t get to lay a hand on her.”

James clamps his hand over his mouth. He’s either going to sick up or sob if he doesn’t, and _no._ He’ll be here for this. _He will not ever run_.

“They seemed to have laid plenty of hands on you, you daft fool,” Granddad says. He’s stroking Uncle Charles’s face, tears streaming down his cheeks as Uncle Charles’s eyes slip closed. That odd prickly feeling along James’s skin is going away, the singing in his blood disappearing. “I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment you were born, and I’ll love you until the end of my life, baby brother.”

Dad kneels down and picks up Uncle Charles’s other hand. “Uncle Charles. God, I—I can’t say goodbye. I’m sorry. I can’t. Not to either of you. I’ll just say…he doesn’t win. You-Know-Who will not win, and if that’s the only vengeance I’ve got, then I hope it’s enough.”

James sees Uncle Charles’s fingers flex on Dad’s hand, release, and then that weird singing in his blood is gone. His great-uncle, Granddad’s younger brother, Charlus Potter, breathes his last just as the first sodding members of the M.L.E. begin Apparating into Kensington.

* * * *

“Oh, God! OH GOD, NO!”

Salazar whirls in place and catches Lucretia before she can plow her way through the rest of the M.L.E. “Lucretia, no!”

“LET ME GO!” Lucretia screams, struggling with all her considerable might to get to the burning house.

“LUCRETIA BLACK PREWETT!” Salazar roars. She holds still, her training as an Auror reacting to the sound of command. “She isn’t in there. She’s gone, but Dorea is not in there. Not there. Do not throw yourself into a fire to suit You-Know-Who’s whim!”

Lucretia lets out a sniffle that sounds like it should have emerged from a small child. “Dorea’s gone?”

“The officers have her, and Charles. Henry is sitting with them,” Salazar tells her. “Elizabetha and Euphemia are coming to join Monty, Henry, and James. They won’t object to your presence.”

“Was it her?” Lucretia hisses. She is no longer fighting Salazar’s grip, but he doesn’t trust her not to bolt the moment he frees her. “Was it that bitch who dares to call herself a Black? Did Bellatrix kill my cousin, Saul?”

Salazar wishes he could say otherwise. “Charles implied such, yes.”

Lucretia screams again, rage and pain that hasn’t been soothed since Bellatrix Black killed her husband. Ignatius enjoyed only three months of doting on his new grandson, Henry Prewett Junior, before his death in May 1976, when Lucretia’s insane cousin announced her goal to execute every member of the Black family who doesn’t meet with her exacting standards.

Bellatrix Black murdered her own uncle, Alphard, in January 1977. In June of 1978, it was Mary Wright Black, Lucretia’s great aunt. She has twice now tried to kill Lucretia’s father, Arcturus Black III, for the _crime_ of not joining Voldemort.

“Lucretia, I am so—” It is pathetic comfort. It’s not nearly enough. “I am so very sorry.”

Lucretia lets out another loud, grieving wail, before she collapses in Salazar’s arms. Salazar holds her upright, letting her fist the lapels of his jacket as she sobs against his shoulder. He rests his hand on Lucretia’s back and wishes that he didn’t know already that Bellatrix Black survives Voldemort’s first war. She’ll sit in Azkaban, but it won’t kill one like her. The prison will most likely make her worse.

Salazar looks up to find James Potter staring at him, his glasses smudged with ash drifting from the burning house, his eyes bloodshot. A Death Eater must have used Fiendfyre to set the blaze, as no spell has been able to bring the fire under control. The magic won’t be satisfied until it has consumed what it was set free to feed upon.

“I can—I can take her,” James says, briefly biting his lip. “And Scrimgeour is looking for you. Told me to tell the man in the jacket to come see him. I think he might be hinting at…y’know.”

Salazar nods in acknowledgement and regret. He cannot stay. He is already at high risk of being recognized, but at least the fire’s dancing, ever-changing light and shadow helps to disguise his features. “Lucretia. It’s James. He’s going to take you to Dorea.”

Lucretia lifts her head, spies James, and lunges at him. James lets out a startled breath when she latches onto to him, but then he steadies himself. “Thank you,” James says.

“No. Don’t thank me. Not yet.”

James gives him an odd look, but then he devotes his attention to Lucretia. They walk away at a slow, stumbling pace.

Salazar hisses under his breath, swearing in a manner that none present will understand. He doesn’t know any longer if Lucretia will fight through the remainder of this war. She and her father now stand as the only family aside from Sirius Black who recognize those like Henry Prewett, Joy Dunbar Prewett, and Henry Prewett Junior as Black relatives, and as a real wizarding family.

“You-Know-Who?” is what Rufus Scrimgeour asks when Salazar finds him. When Salazar nods, Rufus spits on the ground. “God damn that man, and damn that fucking Taboo Curse, too. When I’m damning the deserving, I want to be able to use their name!”

“So do I.”

Rufus sighs, staring at the fire. The upper storeys of the house have collapsed already, but the charms are still holding. The Muggles may not notice that this neighborhood was in danger of burning until there is nothing left but a pile of hot embers and ash. “Go home, Saul. Better yet, find a way to kill this bastard. Wizarding Britain has had about all it can stand of war.”

“We’ll do our best,” Salazar replies, and departs while Rufus’s officers are distracted. They are, and they will, but it will take far longer than anyone prefers, including himself.

* * * *

Salazar is not much surprised to find Nerys waiting on his kitchen windowsill two days later. What is surprising is that there is not one note attached, but two. He first attends to the one written in Euphemia’s beautiful script.

_Sal,_

_There was nothing you could have done. Nothing any of us could have done, and we all know it. We know who is truly to blame, and that is where that blame can and will stay._

_Thank you for being there for James, Monty, and Harry on that terrible night. As this war has raged on, and taken so many from us, you have no idea how grateful I am to know that you are watching over our family when you can._

_The funeral will be held on the 9 th. The service is at noon, and the burial will follow. Dorea wrote in her will that she is to be buried with Charles, not in the Black family vault, and it makes me miss her even more than I already do. It seems impossible that they’re gone, but I have only to look at Harry’s grieving face to know otherwise._

_I know you loved them as much as we. I am so sorry._

_I can grant us all one bright spot. My son has chosen a date for his wedding. The invitations will be delayed in light of what has happened, but to delay them too long would be to admit that You-Know-Who has control of their lives, and I refuse to live that way. Make certain to arrange your availability on 21 st June. You know how Elizabetha will react if you’re not there._

“Marrying on the Solstice,” Salazar murmurs. It’s a wise choice, a strong magical day that encourages life.

The second letter is from James Potter. Salazar tests it for tracing magics before he opens it. The young man’s handwriting is a reflection of his mother’s penmanship, but it is more deliberate stylistic choice rather than letters formed by personality.

_This letter remains unaddressed, but given how Nerys finds her way, I’m certain you’ll know who it’s meant for. Mum made me promise that I wouldn’t try to track or trace where she flew, or I wouldn’t get to use the only owl in Britain capable of finding a dead man._

_Sort of dead. Mostly dead? Not really dead but faking it very well?_

_I did hold my tongue, yes. Nobody knows except family. Granddad handed that down as bloody law when we met in 1975. None of my friends have any idea what’s going on, though of course, Sirius wanted to know who I’m writing to. I told him I’m writing to the family secret, and the family secret was firmly against You-Know-Who. That was enough to satisfy him, but he’s a Pure-blood. He gets it. So does Peter. Remus is beyond curious, but magic on both sides, so he gets it, too. Lily is the one who is probably going to hold the Great Potter Family Secret Nonsense over my head until the day I die._

_1) I really hate that fucking Taboo curse, and 2) I really don’t want to die in this war. I’d like to at least have a kid or two before that happens, you know?_

_Anyway, I did have a point. I’m an Auror, and I have to investigate suspicious activity. I trust my grandfather’s judgement, and my dad’s, and my grandmother’s, and my mother’s, but it’s still the sort of thing I have to ask._

_How did you know to be at Potter Manor that night?_

_By the way, thank you for saving my life. I might’ve forgotten that part._

Salazar grins over the letter. There are moments when this man reminds him of Nizar, and moments in which he is entirely himself. This message is a heartening blend of both. He writes a response that Nerys waits patiently for, gives the owl a good scratching that makes her coo with delight, and sends her off.

_James,_

_Your grandfather and I have the same color eyes. You and I look alike. Answer your own question, or I’ll accuse you of being unobservant for the rest of your days._

_Don’t write to me again during this war. Not because it is unwelcome, but because it is unsafe._

“Better, then?” Nizar’s portrait asks of his father.

Salazar nods. “Yes. To his credit, it wasn’t even joining the war effort that brought about James Potter’s maturity. He’d found it for himself before graduating from Hogwarts. Peter Pettigrew is a bully who lives in terror, but he is not yet a traitor, and I’ve yet to see hint that he’s thought to do so. Remus Lupin has a bit more backbone, though he is fighting his own war in trying to make his father see reason. Lily Evans has matured, also, though I’m uncertain about Sirius Black.”

“Snivellus,” Nizar agrees with a sigh. “Yeah.”

 _Why?_ Salazar wonders after Nizar wanders away from his frame in a pensive mood. Why would Voldemort target Charles and Dorea? Bellatrix’s bloodthirst aside, Dorea was still in good standing with her family despite her marriage to a man from a dubbed Blood Traitor family. Charles publicly declared himself neutral in the conflict shortly after the war began for the sake of his wife’s continued peaceful relations with her family, even if it has long been an uneasy peace.

Gods damn it. How is he to save any of his little brother’s family if his skills in Divination will not _warn_ him of their danger? The sense of blood family in mortal danger was not enough, as it drew him to the wrong house—

_By the way, thank you for saving my life. I might’ve forgotten that part._

No, Salazar realizes, wide-eyed. The family magic drew him to the _right_ house, at the right moment, else James Henry Potter would be dead.

There was no sharp kick of warning magic to his chest.

Maybe Monty is right, something he has stated often after Salazar saved Henry on that train platform in 1971 and received no painful warning kick. Not for the rescue, and not for telling them of Nizar. Maybe the remaining Potters have a chance.

Like Robert Longbottom’s funeral, this one hurts him deeply. Salazar had wanted so much to speak with them again when the war was done, when it was again safe for Charles and Dorea to know that he still lived. Instead, Salazar can only apologize to the stones carved with their names.

Is it not enough, the losses Britain has already endured? He knows when it stops, a date pressed firmly into time, but that is still over two years away.

Nobilis Shacklebolt was assassinated in the small courtyard between The Leaky Cauldron and the bricked entrance to Diagon Alley at the end of 1975, robbing Benjy Fenwick of both his parents. Ignatius Prewett enjoyed three months of being a doting grandfather to Henry Prewett Junior before he was murdered by Bellatrix Lestrange. Two months later, Ignatius Weasley died in battle. In August, his name was granted to Molly and Arthur Weasley’s newborn son Percival.

Caspar Crouch, Charis, Charles, and Caspar Junior all died in autumn of 1976. Charis murdered her husband, as she’d vowed to do since the war began, but not before arranging and overseeing the marriage of her underage daughter Selene to an older Fawley Death Eater.

Alfrid Grace, Euphemia’s useless bigot of a brother-in-law, was killed in a skirmish against the Order of the Phoenix. His was the only loss that particular night, as he was foolish enough not to Disapparate upon realizing he was outnumbered.

William Wilkes died in battle in November 1976, to the continued outrage of several members of his family. Lucretia Prewett gave them a fine British salute from across the Welsh battlefield after she ended Wilkes’s hideous existence. That same battle saw the loss of Death Eater Charlus Quirke, a Manx man from a family divided on whether they will follow Voldemort or ignore him entirely.

Teresa Runcorn Selwyn, a member of the Underground whose name Salazar remained unaware of until after her death, was lost during that same battle. She, at least, was not felled by foolishness; she was killed by her own Runcorn Death Eater cousin while posing as a member of the Order of the Phoenix to spy on their potential idiocy.

In early December 1976, Evan Rosier Senior joined his wife Druella in death at the hands of the M.L.E. Their foul son Patrick still lives; his wife Ingrid is demanding children of her husband that he doesn’t seem much inclined to grant.

Martinus Flint died on Christmas Day 1976, killed by Voldemort himself. He’d attempted to convince his wife Gertrude to flee Britain with him, and baby Marcus, to make certain their son had the best sort of life. Why Martinus thought he would be able to convince one of the most militant of Death Eaters of such a thing is beyond Salazar, and the decision still haunts him. If Martinus had only _told someone_ of what he’d planned! If he’d wanted himself and his son away from this war, plans could have been made. It could have been safely done, but instead, a man who was learning to be better is dead.

January began with Alphard Black’s murder. Eleanora Pryce Grace, Euphemia’s sister, died in April, six months after her husband. Euphemia could not even attend the funeral, as Eleanora’s service was crowded with Death Eaters who would not have hesitated at the opportunity to kill a Blood Traitor.

Lucretia Fleet Lestrange, the woman who’d so feared her husband and sons, had those fears proven correct. She did not die due to carelessness, or at Voldemort’s hand. Patrician murdered her in July 1977 in a fit of rage, convinced his wife was unfaithful to him. Only Lucretia’s twin sons, Rodolphus and Rabastan, attended her funeral—to mock her.

On Imbolc 1978, Voldemort demonstrated that he could kill his own followers through the Dark Mark if they displeased him. Certain members of the Underground suddenly felt far more justified regarding their state of constant paranoia. In the next battle between the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters, Septimus Weasley lost his older brother, Hadrian, leaving only Septimus and Varius Weasley out of the original seven.

Salazar does not regret killing Patrician Lestrange at first presented opportunity, two months after Lucretia Lestrange’s death. His regret lies in the fact that he could not do the same to the horrible pieces of humanity that Patrician sired, but time is firm and unyielding. Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange are alive and in Azkaban in July 1995.

Molly Prewett Weasley’s twin brothers, Fabian and Gideon, were killed that November after being cornered by ludicrous number of Death Eaters. The twins Molly Weasley bore in April 1978, Fred and George, bear their Prewett uncles’ names, just as Percival bears his Weasley uncle’s. Robert Potter II, Henry’s eldest third cousin, died in November as well, but at least he merely succumbed to old age instead of succumbing to someone’s wand.

Euphemia Silvestara Grace, an indoctrinated Death Eater named after Eleanor Grace’s once-beloved older sister, Euphemia Potter, was killed the same month that George and Fred Weasley are born. It was yet another funeral for close family that Euphemia could not attend. At this point in the war, she doesn’t even dare attempt to see her niece’s tomb.

April and May granted them new members of the Underground; Aurors and Order members Frank and Alice Max Longbottom wed in June 1978. Mary Wright Black was killed almost immediately afterwards by Bellatrix Black. Basil Burke then did everyone a fine favor and got himself killed by the Order of the Phoenix in July. Hope Lupin, mother of Remus Lupin, was sought out and murdered by Death Eaters that same month, assisted by Fenrir Greyback. Lyall Lupin, with his skill and knowledge of werewolves, is intent upon hunting Fenrir down to destroy him—a task that Remus Lupin has been attempting to talk him out of, so far to no avail.

Then the sodding Minister for Magic, Millicent Bagnold, gave up. Salazar doesn’t blame her for fearing the seemingly endless assassination attempts, but abandoning her office in 1978 made the war even worse. Until that time, none of them had believed such a thing could be possible.

In her place, the Wizengamot elected Cornelius Fudge, a little-known bureaucrat whose only claim to competence is the fact that he sits in his family’s Wizengamot seat. Salazar knew who Fudge was, of course, thanks to his brother’s portrait, but he thought Bagnold would be replaced by someone with a solid political reputation. He expected Fudge to take office _after_ the war, not in the midst of it! At least Henry and Desdemona, in a moment of mutual disgust, voted against the election of a man whose name was known to almost none at all.

“Fudge has already been elected? You’ll love him! He’s fucking useless,” Nizar’s portrait said cheerfully.

“Great.” Salazar’s hearth was probably sick of burning magical newspapers.

On 4th January this year, Octavian Burke was tortured to death before a full court of Death Eaters for realizing that Voldemort is not right for Wizarding Britain. He was young and confident enough to speak boldly of his opinion, though he said nothing of leaving the Dark Lord’s banner. Many Death Eaters learned that night what happens if one questions Lord Voldemort.

Mere days later, Jewel Talbot Burke began seeking a means of revenge for the murder of her only son. Salazar caught her at it before she could sacrifice her life for no good purpose.

What Salazar’s mind lingers on the most is the night of 13th August 1977. It was not Voldemort personally who killed them, but he sent the Death Eaters who descended on the Potter Townhouse in Central London. Everyone who lived within the townhouse was slain without mercy. Attending the mass funeral held for Charlotte Kahlbridge Potter, her son Samuel George, his wife Joan Melania Macmillan—family to Lucretia by way of her mother—was enough to feel as if he spent the entire memorial service drowning. Laying eyes on William Louis Potter residing in such a small casket remains one of the most difficult things Salazar has done in the violent course of this entire fucking century.

For them, there was no warning. None. That is why Salazar still worries.

Henry finds Salazar sheltering beneath the Cloak in front of two new gravestones, thinking dark thoughts, and in general being a miserable prick. “This is still not your fault.”

“I know.” There is so much Salazar cannot change. He is a part of these events now in a way he’d never expected to be. Even that closeness does not allow him to alter what fate has decreed, and he despises it.

_Dorea Aurora Black_

_18 th August 1920_

_Islington, London England_

_Lost to this world on_

_1 st February 1979_

_The revered day of Imbolc_

_Kensington, London, England_

_Age 58_

_Toujours Pur in heart, in mind, in soul_

_For blood is thick, but the covenant that binds us is greater._

“Spite,” Salazar says in approval. Using the Black Family motto in such a way would certainly infuriate the likes of Bellatrix Black.

“Quite,” Henry agrees. “I thought it was an eloquent choice. She wrote it herself and included it in her will.”

“Dorea was a Black. They’ve always preferred to speak for themselves.”

_Charlus “Charles” Alastair Potter_

_26 th June 1920_

_Godric’s Hollow, Somerset, England_

_Fate and God claimed him on_

_1 st February 1979_

_The revered day of Imbolc_

_Kensington, London, England_

_Age 58_

_ת.נ.צ.ב.ה._

_Blessed is the true judge, our Lord God_

_We Shall Not All Sleep, But We Shall All Be Changed_

“Charles was always a bit more devout than I was,” Henry says softly. “Jewish Protestant Heathen is how he referred to himself if anyone ever asked of his beliefs.”

Salazar stares at the final lines on Charles’s stone for far too long. “I almost remember what it was like to have that sort of faith.”

“Maybe you will find it again.”

Salazar glances at Henry before nodding. Perhaps he will, but he suspects it will be hard to find such a thing in his heart for years to come.


	21. Fair's Fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This war eats lives. They will all have to stay alert and guard each other’s backs.
> 
> Salazar is not in the mood to lose anyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flail-read-cheered by @norcumii, who is probably reaching up with one wobbling arm trying to ask the FeelsTrain to maybe ease up a bit. <3

On Imbolc in 1979, the Underground had fourteen active members, including Salazar, their two contacts within the M.L.E., and one more in Dumbledore’s Order. Within days of Dorea and Charles’s funeral, their number falls by one.

Salazar awakens to someone pounding on the door to the Underground’s upper storey flat in Ilford, the sound amplified by charms that are designed to make certain a resident never misses a visitor. He fell asleep fully dressed, so he needs only to pull on his jacket before opening the door.

He’s greeted by tall Cane Parker, whose fist is still raised to keep knocking. Cane is gasping for breath, the ends of his dyed brown hair dripping with sweat to match his red face. “Sorry.” Cane leans against the doorframe, eyes locked on Salazar’s wand. “Uh, the cat is still in the bag, please don’t kill me, but it’s an emergency.”

“We need new code phrases. That one is getting old.” Salazar doesn’t put his wand away, not after Cane said it was an emergency. “You’re all right?”

“Yeah. Ran all the way here from the Apparition point. Not used to doing that on a fake fuckin’ leg just yet.” Cane pushes himself upright, still panting. “It’s Bastian. He’s—oh, fuck, Saul, Bastian Benedict is in deep shit!”

Salazar makes certain to lock the flat’s door and then yanks it shut, standing next to Cane on the front door mat. It makes the flat appear lived-in, but also serves the purpose of marking the Disillusion Charm that hides anyone standing in front of the door. “Where, Cane?”

“The Carrow Estate. It’s a demonstration.”

“Oh, gods.” After Octavian Burke, every single member of the Underground knows what it means if Voldemort means to stage a _demonstration_. He grabs Cane’s arm and Apparates them without warning, landing at the outer warded boundaries to the estate.

“Fuck me sideways!” Cane yelps, and then slaps his free hand over his face, wide-eyed. “Sorry.”

“I doubt anyone heard you. Chezzit!”

The house-elf appears at once, his once green tea towel now a ragged, dirty brown. His ears hang down past his shoulders without any attempt to lift them, a slump mimed by his shoulders. “What is the Carrow Estate’s guest wanting?”

Salazar smiles at the house-elf and holds out his wand, gently cleaning Chezzit’s garment. It is no longer dirty, though it will never again be the vibrant green it had been when new. Chezzit glances down, runs his long fingers over the clean cloth, and grants Salazar a smile as the elf’s shoulders lift with renewed pride. Salazar understood, even as a child, that if one wanted to accomplish something illicit, one made friends with the servants.

“We need a way past the wards. We’ve no time for disguises, but no one will see or hear us once I’m done casting the charms that will hide us from You-Know-Who and his idiot followers.”

Chezzit looks at Cane, who manages to smile and wave. “Do it quickly, then. If the guest and the Pure-blood mean to be witnesses…”

Salazar points his wand at Cane, who flinches when the Invisibility Charm is cast. “Whoa,” Cane mutters, probably too busy trying to look at his own invisible arms to notice the Muffling Charm, Silencing Charm, and the accompanying Privacy Charm. Then Salazar does the same to himself, grabs Cane by the arm again, and holds out his hand to Chezzit.

In the next breath, they’re standing at the back of a crowded grand ballroom. Chezzit might not have found space at all were it not for the fact that even the Carrow elves have also been ordered to stand witness. Every elf who works in the estate lines the back wall, and the spoiled, bigoted Pure-bloods in the crowd are avoiding them. The Carrows do not take care of their house-elves, all of whom are too thin and filthy. Truly Salazar didn’t think anyone could outdo Lycorus Black’s horrific _tradition_ of how to properly deal with house-elves, but the Carrows managed it.

“There,” Cane murmurs, swallowing hard. “At the front.”

Salazar spies the man lying on the floor at once, alarmed by both the blood and by the continued rise and fall of Bastian’s chest. “Gods, Bastian. What the hell did he do, Cane?”

“He poisoned You-Know-Who,” Cane whispers, swearing when Voldemort casts a strong _Cruciatu_ , its yellow light shining brighter than the torches. The entire room is silent; Bastian’s scream, long and agonized, has no trouble reaching their ears.

“What the fuck possessed him to do such a thing?” Salazar asks, horrified. Bastian hadn’t said a word. He’d mentioned nothing of a planned assassination attempt, or of helping another to try—

“Oh, Blythe,” Voldemort croons, releasing Bastian from the curse. “Blythe Petersen _Crouch_.”

Bastian coughs, wretched and choking. When he speaks, Salazar knows that even if they rescued him now—if they could possibly do so—Bastian would likely not survive. “Not Crouch. My father died without recognizing me. Shit thing to do to your own kid, right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Voldemort lies, which causes Salazar to clench his jaw. Tom Riddle the elder died with his parents, but Salazar has long thought that if he had opened his arms and claimed his son, his death might have been painless rather than torturous. “Why did you betray me, Blythe? After serving me so well for these many years, you attempt to poison your own Dark Lord?”

That sets the Death Eaters to muttering among themselves. Most of those gathered must not have known Bastian’s crime, only that there had been one.

“Many years?” Bastian utters a wet, horrible laugh. “I’ve been…waiting to kill you…since August…19…74.”

Voldemort’s wand lowers a fraction, a hesitation he immediately hides beneath words. “What was that, Blythe?”

“1974!” Bastian suddenly yells. “I’m just—sorry—it didn’t—work!”

Cane audibly gags when too-bright yellow light floods the room. That isn’t a curse meant for long, drawn-out torture, but swift and painful death. When one of the house-elves next to Salazar whimpers, he reaches out and holds her frail, dirt-encrusted hand.

When that terrible curse-light fades, Bastian is no longer breathing. If all Salazar can do for a friend is witness his death, then he will grant him that.

No. There is one other thing. “Chezzit. If the Death Eaters ask you and your fellow elves to dispose of Blythe’s body, please help me to find him later. His mother deserves the chance to bury her son.”

Chezzit gives Salazar a grave nod. “I will be doing as the Founder asks,” the elf says, and Disapparates.

“What did he call you—”

Voldemort interrupts Cane’s question. “My friends,” he says, genteel and gracious once more. “I have taken my revenge, as any proper wizard would do after another attempts to murder him without cause. Thank you for bearing witness as justice was served.”

“Justice,” Cane growls. “Fucker wouldn’t know what justice is even if it crawled up his arse and emerged from his nostrils to slap him in the face!”

Salazar gestures towards the closest exit. “We have to go, now, because our shelter of elves is departing. No one will hear you. Run!”

By the time they’re far beyond the wards of the estate, Cane has figured out how to remove the Invisibility Charm and is sitting on the ground, red-faced and panting for breath once more. “This prosthetic is such shit! If it weren’t for magic moving the joints—”

“You’d prefer a peg leg such as what Alastor Moody sports, then?” Salazar removes all of the remaining charms that safeguarded them before bending over to rest his hands on his knees. He feels as if he’s about to be ill, and it has nothing to do with fleeing the Carrow family’s unpleasant home.

“Nah. Really not all that fond of going the pirate route.” Cane flops backwards onto the grass. “How are you not angry right now?”

“Not angry?” Salazar straightens up and gives Cane an incredulous look. “Cane, I’m bloody fucking furious! I’d happily kill You-Know-Who myself if it was—”

Fuck. Fuck! Salazar clenches his fists, feeling his nails tear jagged paths in his palms. He hadn’t said. He’d said nothing. He had only told the Underground not to attempt to assassinate Voldemort without telling others of their plans. He’d hoped that would be enough, and instead—

“Saul?”

“This is my fault.” Salazar drops down to sit on the damp grass. “If I’d only said! Gods dammit, if _Blythe_ had spoken to us of what he intended, this would not have happened!”

Cane shifts his prosthetic and half-crawls over to sit down next to Saul. “Bastion—Blythe—he did something stupid, Saul. That doesn’t make it your fault.”

Salazar unclenches his fists and looks at raw, reddening skin that hasn’t yet filled with blood. “Volde—” He breaks off, swearing. Damn that Taboo Curse! “You-Know-Who can’t die.”

Cane stares at him. “Please say that again, but this time make it come out so that the words are, ‘You-Know-Who can definitely die.’”

“Oh, he certainly can, at that,” Salazar replies. “One only has to find all of the Horcruxes he has secreted away.” He notes Cane’s rather bug-eyed expression. “I take it you know what I speak of.”

“My mum’s a fucking Black! Of course I know what those are! Why are there multiple Horcruxes? _How fucking many Horcruxes are we talking about?_ ” Cane yells.

Salazar releases a heavy sigh. “Five.”

“WHAT THE FUCK, SAUL?” Cane flails his hands around before he figures out what to say next. “Why haven’t we done anything about that crazy motherfucker’s _five fucking Horcruxes?_ ”

“Because I have no idea where they are.”

“Oh. Fuck.” Cane rubs the side of his face. “Yeah, that’s a good reason. Shit!”

Salazar has suspicions regarding the location of the Diary Horcrux made from the death of Myrtle Warren, but suspicions they must remain; that diary has an appointment to keep in 1992. He truly doesn’t know where the others could be found.

Scrying on the first Horcrux, present or future, only ever grants him the black, reflected surface of what appears to be a polished gemstone. That tells Salazar it is possibly some bit of jewelry, but not what, and not where. Horcruxes three and four, Helga’s corrupted golden cup and the stolen gold locket, are well-hidden in a dark place. When Salazar attempts to spy on the future of those items, he sees a _different_ dark place and the inside of a dark, green-lit cave, which does little to help him determine where they are. For Horcrux number five, Salazar always sees a closed wooden box in a shadowy room full of strange shapes.

His scrying is rarely so useless. These are objects that do not wish to be found.

Salazar is quite familiar with Horcrux number six. He doesn’t think it a lie to say he doesn’t know where that one is. He knows when it _was_ , but it has not yet come to be.

Worse is that Salazar doesn’t know if those six will be the limit of Voldemort’s Horcruxes. At any point before 24th June 1995, Voldemort could make more Horcruxes and hide them throughout bloody Europe.

“Christ on a crutch, Saul,” Cane whispers. “How the fuck are we going to win this war?”

“We wait for You-Know-Who to blunder.”

Cane stares at him, jaw hanging open. “ _Blunder?_ ”

“Men such as he always do,” Salazar says. It’s true, a comfort he is speaking for Cane’s benefit as much as his own. “Hitler grew overconfident and made mistakes that lost him everything. Grindelwald most certainly blundered when he agreed to a wizard’s duel. He was out of practice with such things, so it was a duel that saw him defeated. Kaiser Wilhelm II made such mistakes that he lost a centuries-old kingdom and destroyed an empire. Yes, You-Know-Who will blunder.”

“When?” Cane asks.

“In a war such as this, when that fatal mistake is made…everyone will know.”

* * * *

Chezzit doesn’t come to find Salazar until late the next evening. “Chezzit apologizes to the Founder.” Salazar is glad that at least this time, he is alone, with no one to ask about a house-elf granting him that sort of title. Cane, fortunately, seems to have either forgotten about the elf’s slip in light of Blythe’s death, or is biding his time and waiting for further clues. “It was not being safe for anyone to retrieve the brave wizard’s body until now.”

“You’ve nothing to apologize for. Though do stop referring to me that way in front of others. It would lead to awkward explanations,” Salazar requests.

Chezzit lifts his chin. “You were there to witness the brave wizard’s death, and that makes you the Founder. Chezzit will not be calling you that in front of an enemy.”

Salazar would again argue that he doesn’t want it said in front of allies, either, but the elf wouldn’t listen. Once an elf has made up their mind, gods help you if you happen to stand in their way. Even the Carrow house-elves, abused and ill-treated as they are, hold as much stubbornness as the free elves of Burgos.

He does what he can to make certain Blythe’s face is again easily recognizable, no longer as maimed as the rest of his body. His mother deserves to see her son, to know him without needing to search for identifying marks that would make it all too clear that his death was horrific. Salazar will gladly suffer those nightmares in order to spare Blythe’s mother the same.

Arranging for a certificate of death in the Muggle world has become a complete pain in the backside. If the family is to be able to claim any possible death benefits at all, everything must appear to be legal. Salazar would much prefer the Ministry of Magic be forced to do this on Blythe’s behalf, but the Ministry only concerns itself with covering up illicit Muggle deaths. Blythe’s death cannot be considered suspect, no matter how many Wizengamot Death Eaters know otherwise, else they risk history forever branding him as a Death Eater instead of the honorable man he’d been.

The only thing horrible enough to explain Blythe’s terrible injuries in the Muggle world is a car accident. Salazar searches for and finds the right sort of abandoned car, one that the Department for Transport must have missed in its attempts to keep such things confined to a scrapyard. Convincing a copper to write up a falsified police report leaves him feeling irritable. Altering the memories of an enemy to keep a spy safe is one thing, but that poor copper isn’t involved in this war. He doesn’t deserve the memory of stumbling onto the day-old wreckage of a car and a body.

Then he discovers that it’s become a trial to acquire proof of death. Salazar now needs a medical certificate signed by a physician, a registrar’s interference of extra paperwork, and then the coroner’s signature on a second certificate. Only then is Blythe Petersen recognized as deceased by the British government.

“This was easier the last time I needed it done. Wasn’t it?” Salazar asks. It’s far easier to create a false living identity in the United Kingdom. Trinity, Monica, Richard, Henry Deacon, Susan, and Bailey each have two sets of Muggle identification, just in case. Cane and Abel have the same, but theirs is marked for the Republic of Ireland, and was even simpler to gain. The Irish are a bit more laid back about most things, unless those things are English.

“Sal, the last time you faked your death, it was 1890,” Nizar’s portrait says. “You told me the coroner took a swig of whiskey, stamped your paperwork, congratulated you on being dead, and sent you on your way. Yeah, I’d say it was easier.”

“Bob was quite a fellow to work with, yes.” Salazar packs what belongings they were able to rescue from Blythe’s Diagon Alley flat after it was swarmed by vengeful, idiot Death Eaters, and then steels himself. He has never met Eleanor Clarice Petersen, but most mothers do not relish receiving the news of their child’s death.

Eleanor Clarice Petersen does not seem to socialize much. She doesn’t strike Salazar as unpleasant; instead, Eleanor Petersen reminds Salazar of the willing recluse, those who are not much fussed if they socialize or not. Blythe’s mother handles the news well enough, though it is obvious that her son’s death hits hard.

She claims that she expected to bury her son from the moment Blythe warned her he was to be involved in a magical war. Salazar looks into her brown fire-flecked eyes, so like her son’s, and believes her.

The funeral is a smaller crowd than Blythe deserves, but larger than it would have been if none from the Underground had turned up. Eleanor Petersen greets Rufus Scrimgeour and Lucretia Prewett, acting as officials from the Ministry as well as two who knew Blythe and the truth of his chosen task. Blythe’s mother is grateful for their presence, taking from it the reassurance that her son will one day be vindicated, his reputation restored and honored as it should be.

“You all knew my son?” Eleanor Petersen asks of chair-bound Trinity, elegant Monica, young Richard Burke (who seems to have aged not at all in four years), grim Henry Deacon, Cane and Abel Parker, who took a joke too far and make no apologies for it, pristinely attired Gina Davidson, and quiet Susan Lewis. Only four of theirs are absent. Two are trapped in a meeting of Albus Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix; Annette Travers couldn’t leave behind an unfolding family situation in Amiens. Jewel Burke thought her presence would not be helpful, as she said in blunt honesty that she wasn’t certain if she could cope with watching another mother bury her adult son when she had so recently done the same. Jewel’s Pure-blood composure stuttered badly when Salazar and Monica had both agreed that Jewel should do as she feels best, as Jewel no doubt expected to be chastised for weakness.

“We all did, yes,” Trinity replies.

“I knew Blythe for less than a year,” Susan murmurs. “But I know a good man when I meet one.”

Eleanor Petersen nods, satisfied. She remains stoic through the funeral, but it is a mask, a bad one. She is only forty-six years old, and must bury her only child before his twenty-second birthday.

This war eats lives. They will all have to stay alert and guard each other’s backs.

Salazar is not in the mood to lose anyone else.

* * * *

Lily stares at the wide expanse of gleaming coffee table, which is currently covered in garish wedding magazines both Muggle and Wizarding. There is even a book of sewing patterns for wedding gowns, just for good measure. Another Muggle magazine full of wedding dresses is still sitting open on her lap, a great deal of photographed white fabric gleaming up from its pages. Lily thinks it looks like someone murdered a cloud.

She despises all of them. She hates the Muggle starch look, and she _really_ loathes the title of Wizarding Britain’s only wedding magazine, _A Witch’s Best Day!_ , which has _Best Day_ underlined for some really galling emphasis.

“Oh, I know that look,” Mum says, grabbing the edge of the stupid magazine and pulling it off of Lily’s lap.

“Translate for us, please?” Mrs. Potter asks, sounding amused. “We’re still learning Lily-Speak.”

“Unless it is accompanied by Yelling-At-James-Speak,” the older Mrs. Potter says. Definitely amused. “That one is easy to interpret.”

“As is Yelling-At-Sirius-Speak.”

The elder Mrs. Potter nods in agreement. “We’re all familiar with that one.”

“This particular expression,” Jane Evans says, “is ‘Can we please shove all of this nonsense into the rubbish bin?’”

“What am I doing looking at wedding gowns, anyway?” Lily bursts out. She’s on the verge of crying again, and God, she doesn’t want to. Her sinuses are throbbing as it is, her nose too clogged even after slugging back a strong Pepper-Up that’s supposed to clear out everything. Lies. She can prove that potion doesn’t fix everything except the basic, low-grade awful caused by the common cold. Madam Pomfrey will just have to cope. “Dad’s in the hospital, and I’m just—just—”

Mum waits until Lily stutters to a halt, like she always does, watching Lily with green eyes that are just like the ones Lily sees in her mirror every day. “Why did it suddenly become so important to choose a wedding gown in March when the wedding is in June?”

Lily bites her lip and sniffs hard. Shit. She’d gotten so wrapped up in hating everything in the stupid dresses in these magazines that she forgot. “Because Dad’s in the hospital, and I want him to see it.”

Mum pats her hand. “Better.”

“What is wrong with all of these?” Mrs. Potter asks. “Granted, most of them look uncomfortable, and I’m including the wizarding selections in with that opinion.”

Elder Mrs. Potter shakes her head, which pulls on the long silver braid hanging over her shoulder. “You know, when I was married, Wizarding Britain’s fashions weren’t that far out of line with Muggle dress, but it seems as if they’re insistent on going backwards. My mother certainly didn’t miss the ridiculous amount of buttons required of Victorian fashion.”

Lily manages to smile and answer James’s mum’s question. “They really do look uncomfortable, is the thing, Mrs. Potter.”

Mrs. Potter gives her a look that is definitely known by mums everywhere. “I seem to recall a conversation we’ve had about using my name.”

Lily flinches. “Uh—”

“And mine,” the elder Mrs. Potter adds. “If you’re not using our given names, how is it we’re to know who you’re speaking to?”

“Make really good guesses,” Lily says promptly, which sets Mrs. Potter—Euphemia!—off laughing, and James’s grandmum—Elizabetha!—smiles.

“Then…” Elizabetha gestures at the magazine-covered table. “What is wrong with these? Aside from the obvious.”

“It’s…they…I’m a Muggle-born, and I’ll get dressed like one, but this is all sheer fabric and ugly dress lines, or yards and yards of itchy, awful-looking lace. And the veils!” Lily exclaims, heartened when she sees no disagreement, not even from Mum. “They’re ridiculous, especially when they add that stupid box hat! I thought the 1960s were over with!”

“Sometimes I believe they forgot to end,” Mum murmurs.

“Exactly!” Lily stabs one of the open Muggle magazines with her finger. “And this one! I don’t have a thing against hippies and flower children, but this model doesn’t look like she’s getting married. She looks like she’s ready to go out and weed a vegetable plot in that dress! And this one here—if I wanted to have a long train that badly, I’d go out and buy a ticket to ride one that’s actually useful for something!”

“Then if I am understanding you correctly…” Elizabetha takes a moment to pour herself a fresh cup of tea. “You want to wear something that suits a bride for a wedding, but not stiff, not uncomfortable. No excessive lengths of fabric, no excess of lace, and…” She glances at the nearest open Muggle magazine. “Is your objection to the sheer fabric the fact that it is a single layer worn on the bride’s skin?”

“Yes, but it’s not really about modesty. I just think the dresses using that look daft. And itchy,” Lily adds. “Without paying through the nose, which we _definitely_ can’t afford, all of these dresses are probably made out of polyester or something.”

“Rayon wasn’t so bad when it was first introduced. I had a dress as a child that looked and flowed like real silk. I always hated that I outgrew it, as we certainly couldn’t afford another. Your aunt Naomi loved that dress to pieces for the brief time she could wear it, too. I haven’t seen its like in a long time. Besides, you’re right,” Mum adds. “Nowadays everything seems to be made from polyester.” She tilts her head at the hated wizarding magazine. “The witch robes don’t seem to match with the gowns underneath at all. The robes are rather pretty, but that dress front, and those sleeves! I feel claustrophobic just from looking at so many buttons, and the sleeves are so tight they look as if they’ll cut off blood flow to your hands!”

Euphemia laughs again. “I didn’t wear witch’s robes when I wed Monty, either. I wore my mother’s dress—turn of the century, lovely flowing fabric. It was completely in fashion in both worlds when she purchased it; Mother never mucked about when it came to that. By the time 1954 came along, her dress was still perfectly acceptable for me to wear it in front of English wizards. If it weren’t for the fact that you’re so much taller than I am, I’d offer it to you at once.”

“Thank you.” Lily appreciates the thought, even if she’d look like she’d be wearing a child’s dress if she tried it on. James’s mother is several inches shorter than Lily. Euphemia claims to have rounded quite a bit with age, but Lily thinks she still looks lovely. Not a single Muggle with sense would call _her_ fat.

_Look at the fat on you now! Look at the fatty fat!_

_Shove it, Tuney._

_Can’t even keep the flab off, can you? What good is your freak magic for that?_

_Shut up, Petunia!_

As possible final conversations go, that one hadn’t been a winner. Lily really doesn’t think Petunia and Vernon are going to be much interested in her wedding.

“I can’t even offer you my wedding dress, you grew to be so tall,” Mum is saying. Lily shakes off the memory of that disastrous, _very_ brief dinner, and starts paying attention again. “Besides, it was wartime. I married your father in a good blue church dress. I think I wore out that poor old dress before you were born.”

Mum could’ve said Petunia, but she didn’t. Lily bites her lip, because Petunia won’t talk to any of them right now. Dad is in _hospital_ , and still Petunia won’t say anything to him.

“Your sister’s choices are not your fault,” Mum says quietly. Of course she noticed. “And much as I feel guilty about it, her choices aren’t even my fault. I didn’t raise Petunia to be the way she is. She chose that all by herself, sweetheart.”

“I know,” Lily whispers. Most days, she knows it. Some claw marks in her head are a bit too recent, is all.

“Perhaps you might like to see mine,” Elizabetha says. “My wedding dress, I mean.”

Lily glances at her in surprise. “But you’re short, too,” she blurts out, and then blushes. “Sorry.”

“Never apologize for speaking the truth unless it is a truth badly timed,” Elizabetha replies. She wandlessly summons a framed photograph. “I do not keep mementos of the family in public parts of the house. You may not have seen it before.”

Lily shakes her head. “We’ve been…sort of busy.”

“That is a terrible code for _risking your lives_ ,” Euphemia says dryly. Lily gives her an apologetic look, but doesn’t say anything. She’s trying to protect both worlds by fighting back against You-Know-Who. Nothing is going to stop her until this war is over, and that arrogant bastard is very, very dead.

Elizabetha smiles down at the large photograph, which resides in a gold-wrapped frame. “In my culture, red is the color for weddings. It’s the first color, the color of life. Of course, we’re usually adding gold or white to that. Gold is literally meant for good fortune. White is for Saraswati. I always thought it was also a way for a bride to show mourning for the family she is leaving for the one she is gaining. The Hindu families in Britain, such as mine and the Patils, have always dressed our young brides in red and gold.”

“But…” Elizabetha looks up, a bit of a sly smile on her face. “I was marrying Harry Potter. The idea of a Western bride wearing white had solidified itself in the minds of Muggles and wizards alike by 1919, so I could not wear a red dress. The idea of a white gown was so terrible for my parents; a widow is the one who wears white. It felt like an ill omen. I decided that I would compromise on some things, but not others.” Then she hands over the photograph.

It’s clear at once that it’s a Wizarding photograph, as both bride and groom are waving. It’s also in full color instead of the more common black-and-white.

Harry Potter is so young that it’s startling. James definitely takes after his grandmother with his wild black hair, but there is something about his, Harry’s, and Monty’s faces that just screams _Potter!_ to anyone really paying attention. James’s grandfather is wearing a suit that is styled like something from the previous century, but he looks dapper instead of silly. It fits perfectly with the open black robes he’s wearing over it.

Elizabetha is wearing a red and gold sari, just like the one Lily almost always sees her wearing when Elizabetha Potter is at home. She has the Hindi red smudge on her forehead, and is wearing a great deal of gold jewelry. A full line of glittering bangle bracelets in red and ivory climbs both of her arms. Just like the sari, they’re a perfect match for the bangles she wears right now, and the _dress_. That absolutely gorgeous dress!

Lily stares at the photograph, drinking in details. It’s probably Edwardian, though Lily never paid much attention to that sort of thing. It’s not yards and yards of stupid cloth. The short sleeves and long gown with its small train are made of layers and layers of sheer, loose ivory fabric. Lily knows that not a bit of it is itchy or artificial. A wide gathering of fabric wraps Elizabetha’s stomach, and the bodice is edged with beautifully embroidered gold and red flowers. They start just between her breasts, where a large red ruby brooch is pinned in place, and follow the dress’s collar line all the way up until the flowers disappear over Elizabetha’s shoulders. Her neckline and upper chest are bare skin but for the golden chain and pendant she’s wearing. The rest of Elizabetha’s gown is embroidered with deeper ivory and shining gold thread; the sleeve edges and skirt also have tiny little ruby-red beads sewn in place, where they twinkle like real jewels. The embroidered collar fits the flowery ideals of the Peace Movement, but the dress looks as if it belongs in a museum.

Lily realizes she has her hand over her mouth, her eyes prickling with tears for another reason entirely. It’s perfect, exactly what she wants, but there is no way she can afford—

“If you are thinking of money in any form at this moment, I will be very unhappy,” Elizabetha’s voice cuts through her thoughts. “It isn’t traditional, a mother-in-law supplying her future daughter with a dress, but sod tradition. You will spend the money you’ve been saving to purchase a gown for your mother, instead.”

“It—it might be too small. And too short in the front,” Lily mumbles, feeling the old creeping shame of being a poor witch from Cokeworth, one who thinks she’s good enough to marry James Potter and Sirius Black.

God, she’s so spoiled, and she’s ridiculous. She thinks she grew up poor even after she found out that Severus had it so much worse. Lily and her family were practically wealthy in comparison.

 _Worth isn’t about your birth, or people like Lucius Malfoy would be decent instead of Death Eaters_ , Lily reminds herself.

“My dress was hemmed properly, I assure you. There will be plenty of fabric in the front and back so that it can be altered to match your illustrious height,” Elizabetha says. “I doubt it will be a concern, but the same applies to the bust and the waist. It will fit, daughter.”

Mum puts her arm around Lily’s shoulders when Lily bursts into tears. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

* * * *

If Salazar had met Jewel Talbot Burke before Desdemona Bulstrode Dunbar, it might have been Jewel who became Salazar’s stand-in for the Underground. What would have halted him is her remaining intolerance for those who aren’t Pure-bloods. Jewel Burke is precisely polite to everyone in the Underground, no matter whose side they’d once fought for or the station of their birth, but her mannerisms are noticeably colder to those who are Half-blood and Muggle-born.

When she first joins them after Octavian’s terrible death, Blythe’s funeral is only two days behind them. Jewel is sympathetic regarding Blythe’s loss when she learns of it, knowing all too well how much it hurts to see a loved one tortured to death by the Dark Lord. She still wants revenge for what was done to her son, but Jewel is intelligent enough to recognize that it’s acceptable to be a tool of Voldemort’s defeat, if not the direct cause.

Salazar thinks long and hard on what he learns of her, and her preferences, before deciding he has no bloody idea how to break through her unnecessary prejudice. Like he’d once done with Martinus Flint, Salazar will have to wait, watch, and see if Jewel is able to draw the correct conclusions on her own. It’s possible; he can see that it happens like a reflection on the water. It’s _how_ this will come to pass that eludes him.

Trinity has been collecting static-print xerograph copies of sign language for Salazar, who doesn’t think he’ll ever find a way to attend one of these classes before the war ends unless he sends himself back in time again—and gods, he doesn’t want to do that. It’s not worth how he feels upon waking up, and that is aside from the difficulty that might be involved in staying out of his own blasted way. Better it be the xerograph prints, which Salazar and Nizar’s portrait have used to learn the full British alphabet, basic greetings and farewells, common requests, and, thanks to one enterprising young woman, how to swear by sign.

“ _Swearing is always a necessity_ ,” Nizar says, the corner of his mouth turned up as he makes the sign for arsehole. “ _I don’t think anyone would have a lot of trouble understanding that one._ ”

“It is rather emphatic.” Salazar thinks the same of the sign for bollocks. It’s rather obvious, and even more so with context. He signs one of the basic greeting messages, and then has to fingerspell the rest. He wants to know the signs for these words; fingerspelling is a pain in the backside. “How are you doing? With the language and the memories.”

“ _The memory deterioration isn’t getting any worse. I think it’s because I stopped fighting the language degradation,_ ” Nizar hisses, though he accompanies the Parseltongue with signs for the few words that they know. “ _That should theoretically hold things until 1995._ ”

“ _Theoretically,_ ” Salazar repeats.

“ _Hey, do you know anything about ancient paintings and how long their magic is supposed to last? Because I sure as fuck don’t. Fellona’s portrait might be hanging in front of the entrance to Gryffindor Tower, but unless we go interview her sixteen years too early, I don’t know if she remembers everything from our time._ ”

Salazar frowns. “ _Fellona is hanging over the entrance to the tower? Why?_ ”

“ _Because it’s a locked and password-protected door. No one understands how to socialize any longer,_ ” Nizar says dryly. “ _Worse is what they call her, Sal. She doesn’t even have a name, just the_ lovely _title of The Fat Lady._ ”

Salazar rubs his face. “ _Good gods, which portrait of her is it?_ ” If they’re calling that whipcord-thin child Fellona had been at first meeting _fat_ in 1995, then he is terrified for the health of every young woman in Great Britain.

“ _The last one before she got married and stopped teaching because she wanted to go cause chaos by raising vicious little Defence magic master Heirs for her island kingdom._ ”

“ _Ah._ ” Salazar knows exactly what portrait Nizar speaks of. Fellona had read of Grecian and Roman fashions and posed in a Grecian-styled summer dress for her last portrait as a teacher, but had also asked for other garments to be packed away within the painting for her portrait-self to enjoy. “I’ll admit that Fellona was not inclined to be slender as an adult, but she was not— _she is not deserving of a name that implies only cruelty!_ ”

“ _Of course she isn’t. Neither is the Ugly Witch statue, or any of the other depictions of female magicians around the school who are granted foul titles instead of names._ ”

Salazar draws in a deep breath and lets it out in a low hiss that is not language, merely anger. “ _Thank you for warning me. Walking into the castle without knowing of these things might have been disastrous._ ”

“ _You’re welcome. You have an owl waiting, by the way._ ”

Salazar goes to the kitchen windowsill to retrieve Nerys, who is in a much more agreeable mood due to Salazar’s promptness. The longer she waits, the less inclined she is to let him have his messages. He has learned the hard way that four days is the limit of her patience before she’ll linger only long enough to leave a trail of owl excrement behind her as she departs.

Among the items that Nerys has brought to him through his Potter-based mail forwarding service are a few letters from members of the Underground, all of them written in code. It can’t be information that requires swift action, else they would have sent word by Patronus, called Salazar’s telephone, or contacted him by Floo. He sets those aside in favor of the heavy cream envelope bearing the Potter family crest of its simple triangle breaking the bounds of a circle. No surviving family member remembered what it was meant to represent until Salazar told Monty, though he suspects Monty has kept the truth of that particular nursery tale to himself until certain other truths came along to reveal it.

The heavy envelope contains a wedding invitation for 21st June, a little over 3 months from now, occurring at solar noon on the Summer Solstice. He wonders who suggested the specificity of the time. The longest and brightest point of the year has long been considered the most ideal time to marry among magicians, though the practice has fallen out of favor, and out of history, but for the inclination for brides to desire summer weddings.

The location being Potter Manor is not a surprise. After Elizabetha redesigned the back garden (after Salazar turned it into a fucking crater by accident), it has maintained its status as one of the most vibrant and beautiful gardens in Wizarding Britain. Other Pure-blooded families try to compete, using statuary, flowers, and plants that will tolerate an English climate, but Elizabetha is a wonderful magical cheat who knows how to coax flowers and herbs from India to grow as if they’re greedy weeds. They’re accompanied by tropical fruit trees that otherwise _loathe_ England, adding bright spots of color at taller heights. At the rear of the garden, framed by the sweeping grace of two old weeping willow trees, is an intricate arbor grown from twisting vines. Wild roses and ivy compete each season as to which plant can overtake the other to cover the arbor entirely in green.

It’s the _names_ of those to be wedded that cause Salazar to gape at the invitation in disbelief.

 _Three_. Three names. A magical triad marriage.

“ _You’re shitting me_.” Nizar’s portrait stares at him in utter disbelief. “ _Tell me you are_.”

“ _I’m not_.” Salazar holds up the gilt invitation so that Nizar can read it for himself. Bloody hell, he’s in fairly regular contact with the Potter family. Granted, they do not discuss James Potter’s dating life, but—but—how did he _miss_ this?

“ _You knew Sirius Black as a godfather. Why would he not have told you?_ ”

“ _I’m not sure._ ” Nizar sits back, looking as shell-shocked as any soldier in the trenches. “ _Azkaban fucked him up pretty badly, Sal. Maybe…maybe the three of them don’t actually get married for some reason?_ ”

“ _Perhaps,_ ” Salazar grants him. Much is possible in war, and a relationship that began as platonic returning to such once hot blood has the chance to cool is not unheard of. “ _But what if they do wed?_ ”

Nizar shrugs. “ _I don’t fucking know, Sal. I just—I had no idea. None. I wouldn’t be surprised if Albus fucking Dumbledore ordered Sirius not to tell me just to keep his illusion of the ‘necessity’ of the blood wards intact, though._ ”

“ _That would not surprise me, either_.” Salazar taps the invitation against his thigh before he thinks to stop. There may come a day when his little brother wishes to have this sort of memento, and it should be kept in pristine condition. “ _I suppose the only way to find out will be to attend. Euphemia has already provided me with an identity to use with Multa Facies Sucus, but even cutting the hair will only grant me two hours to spy upon your parents’ wedding._ ”

“ _Sal, just give up and call it Polyjuice like everyone else in this century._ ”

“ _The hell I will,_ ” Salazar growls. He created that potion, and he’ll be using the name he gave it, thank you.

Nizar rolls his eyes and changes the subject. “ _Myself will be glad you’re attending this. You’ll be able to share memories of the event, not mere photographs_.”

“ _That’s true_ ,” Salazar agrees, his poor mood lightening. “ _I still hope it’s a simple romantic failing and a return to friendship. I have no contingency plans for Sirius Black, little brother._ ”

“ _You_ can’t _have one for him, no matter what,_ ” Nizar reminds him, though he looks frustrated. “ _Sirius spent twelve years in Azkaban, Sal. You can’t fake what that does to someone_.”

“ _Gods damn this entire mess of a war,_ ” Salazar mutters, and goes off to find something suitable to drink. He does not care that it is not yet noon. No stupid clock is going to tell him when it is or isn’t time to become slightly sodden. He’d much prefer a bout of entirely sodden right now, but he cannot. If there is another emergency, if he is needed by the Underground for any reason, he needs to be able to see to them at once.

When a member of the Underground turns up on Salazar’s doorstep at ten that evening, Salazar is by then, unfortunately, very sober. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” Abel Parker yells, blowing past Salazar to stomp his way into the kitchen. “I need to become very pissed in short order!”

Salazar rubs his forehead and then shuts his front door. “Dear gods, what’s gone wrong now?”

“Benjamin Fenwick is dead. Fucking Death Eaters!” Abel shouts.

“Bloody hell.” Salazar reaches beneath the sofa cushions and hands Abel the bottle that Salazar had hidden from himself earlier. When he is tired enough, out of sight is, briefly, out of mind. “What happened?”

“It was a planned attack. Assassinated him right in the Alley, broad bloody daylight,” Abel says after slugging back a surprising amount of Irish-crafted whiskey. “This is shit, Saul. I live on that island; I should know.”

“I’m not a fan of Ogden’s.” Gods, an assassination in broad daylight. “They’re getting bolder.”

“Not sure if I’d label that boldness or cowardice,” Abel counters, taking another pull from the bottle. He’s picked up more of the westernmost of the western isle’s accent in the brief weeks it’s been since Salazar has seen the man. “They were there, they killed Fenwick, they were off again.”

“That leaves…” Salazar trails off. “Shit. That leaves Benjy Fenwick, doesn’t it?”

Abel salutes Salazar with the whiskey bottle. “Yeah, that it does. From what I understood from Frank—I was posing as someone who really shouldn’t have been shitfaced pissed this evening, but it worked out. Anyway, Frank was trying to say it without _actually_ saying it, but Benjamin’s sister Enid has her hands full just dealing with her husband, Frank’s uncle Algie, while Laela Fenwick is a Burke for marrying Bilius. No one in the Fenwick clan ever got around to changing things so a married female Fenwick could reclaim the name and take the seat, but neither of Benjamin’s sisters want to be the family politician, anyway.”

Salazar raises an eyebrow. Most of the Pure-bloods he’s dealt with of late would literally jump at the chance to sit in the Wizengamot. “And Benjamin’s husband was killed in 1975.”

“Nobilis wouldn’t be in the mood to deal with the Wizengamot even if he were still with us. Besides, the Shacklebolts are matrilineal, have been for years. He’d have seen himself taking a seat on the Wizengamot as an insult to his niece Regena. He definitely wouldn’t have wanted anyone to think she was too young for the seat, and he was meant to replace her. No, it’ll be Benjy who the Wizengamot calls on to fulfill those particular family duties. I hope the first thing Benjy does is get rid of that sexist nonsense. He has three cousins, one of them with kids, and all of them could be squabbling over the Fenwick seat if it weren’t for Benjamin never getting around to fixing the seat’s old laws.”

“It should be changed for _every_ such seat in the Wizengamot, not left up to the individual families.”

“Hah!” Abel shakes his head. “Pollux Black would try to kill everyone in the chamber before he’d let that sort of thing fly, Saul, and you know it.”

“How is Benjy taking the news?” Salazar has met Benjy Fenwick multiple times, yet neither know when such occurs. They’ve only seen each other when Salazar is using Multa Facies Sucus, or Benjy Fenwick is in disguises of varying sorts on those occasions when he is working for the Underground instead of the Order. Salazar doesn’t even know what false name Benjy chose, just as he does not know the true identities of Letitia Branstone, Richard Burke, Lisa Hornbeak, Cane and Abel, Amy Malden, Susan Lewis, and Baily Robin. None of the Underground are fool enough to limit their Death Eater disguises to specific genders.

“Benjy’s still in shock. I didn’t have much of a chance to speak to him tonight, but I think he’ll will try to pull that stiff upper lip nonsense before he falls apart for a bit.”

Salazar nods. “I’ll let Trinity know. I will make no one do tasks such as these when they’re grieving, even if they’ve not caught up to themselves enough yet to admit to it.”

Abel makes another disturbing amount of whiskey vanish. “Is that why none of us start off immediately unless we don’t have a choice?”

Salazar smiles at Abel. “Did you want to be rushing back out to spy on Death Eaters when news spread in Wizarding Britain regarding your demise, or did you want to rush back out to murder as many Death Eaters as possible?”

“Definitely the latter. Some days I still don’t think about much else, though at least now I’ve got it narrowed down to the fuckers who cornered us that night.” Abel picks up the bottle and screws the cap back on after a confused moment of needing to remember that a cap is not a cork. “Mine, now. Getcher own.”

“I was done with it, regardless.”

“What’s your long face for?” Abel asks him. “Aside from another good wizard being murdered, that is. I know you’re not yet over Charles and Dorea Potter, even if you’re not saying much about it.”

“There is very little to say that has not already been said.” Salazar nearly yanks the bottle of whiskey back out of Abel’s hand in recompense for that reminder. “I suspect another who I’ve been looking after, one I’ve helped to keep safe from You-Know-Who’s sort, isn’t going to need looking after for much longer.”

Abel sighs. “Yeah. Is it me, or does it seem like the war is getting worse?”

“It isn’t you. It’s doing exactly that.”

“Buggering bollocks to that, then,” Abel says. “I have one bit of good news for you. Amy’s the one that brought him in, and Trinity’s the secondary, but we’ve officially got a new fool for the Underground.”

“That does help things seem a bit less dire. Does our new fool have a new name?”

Abel shakes his head. “It’s too soon. The poor sod’s only been ours for about two days, and he’s lucky enough to have been overlooked. Ex-Death Eater,” he clarifies. “This one’s not Marked. Trinity hasn’t had time to put together the paperwork for a new name, but I imagine he’ll have to jump right into work just to keep out of trouble with You-Know-Who. Unlike some of us, he’s a bit too alive to go unnoticed.”

“This one isn’t grieving any recent losses, is he?” Salazar asks.

Abel spreads his arms. “I’ve got no idea, mate. I need to off and Apparate myself home before the liquor hits and I end up splinching myself all over Belfast. I thought you’d want the news, though. All of it, good and bad.”

“Which I appreciate,” Salazar replies. “Thank you.” He sees Abel off and takes a moment to rest his head against the closed door.

“ _Foul mood again, idiota?_ ” Nizar’s portrait asks.

“Elizabetha recently told me that Amber Rothschild Hitchens has a new granddaughter. Robert Hitchens Junior and John Morgan II have a new baby sister. It’s not enough. The deaths have overtaken and surpassed the births. When that point of a war arrives, it never matters how long it takes to end it; the damage is done. Those losses will leave scars that last for generations.”

* * * *

Lily cracks open the heavy hospital room door and peers around the corner. The nurse’s station is several rooms off, with only two matrons—nurses, Muggle, they’re _nurses!_ —on duty. The rest are either on rounds, or off at home. Satisfied, she closes the door again with a spell-muffled click and then hurriedly cast’s Severus’s old privacy spell, adding James’s Auror-learned silencing charms.

“I cannot _believe_ we’ve just teleported into a hospital after midnight!” Mum exclaims in a loud whisper.

Lily grins “Apparated.”

“Young lady, you have yet to tell me what possible difference there could be between them.”

“Yeah, I know.” Lily turns around and her smile falters.

Dad is laying in his hospital bed, fast asleep. His color has gotten so much worse in the last week. He’s still breathing on his own, but it sounds long, drawn-out, and harsh; the bit of plastic beneath his nose is feeding him oxygen. At least tonight it isn’t the full mask, because those are the really bad nights, and those happen more and more often. He has to sleep with the bed elevated to lift his head now, and to lift his feet, or they risk having to—to—

No. Dad isn’t going to lose any limbs to oxygen starvation. He’s going into his coffin with all of himself, just as he came into the world. He asked Lily to promise him that, even if she and Mum have to toss his removed limbs into the coffin with him afterwards. Lily really isn’t down with the idea of limb-chucking, so Dad is just going to have to keep everything attached.

“Oh, my poor love,” Mum croons softly. “I hate to wake him up, but I just don’t see these nurses being so understanding about this.”

“Some of them are,” Lily says, because attitudes about the sick and Muggle hospital visitations are changing, getting better. Unfortunately, the hospital in Sutton Codfield is staffed with hardliners who definitely wouldn’t approve. They’d call it frivolous, or disrespectful of the dying, when it’s not _either_ of those things.

“Malcolm?” Mum lifts Dad’s hand with its bruised skin from the IV port being jiggled too often. Lily takes a breath and then whispers a spell to fix those bruises, clearing up Dad’s skin. She wants to be able to clear the nodules from his lungs from the fucking coal dust just as much, and she tried. God knows that she tried so hard!

It was a disappointing way to learn the first and hardest lesson: magic can’t fix everything. War is hammering in every other lesson that Hogwarts conveniently left out.

Her father’s brown eyes slowly blink open. They’re dull with sleep and drugs, but he finds Mum’s face right away. Then he takes in Mum’s dress—the blue silk dress Lily helped her to find and to buy, the one that looks just like the simple-sleeved gown with its flowing skirt she’d had as a girl.

Lily has never seen someone’s face become transcendent with joy before. She always thought it sounded silly, but now…now she sees why it’s considered to be such a religious thing. That is the sort of expression that would make a doubter believe in God.

“My beautiful Jane,” Dad whispers. It’s his reassuring, leathery voice with too much rasp behind it, too much of the sound of someone who is drowning on dry land. “It’s the same color dress as the one I married you in. Is this for the wedding, dear?”

Mum nods, a single tear slipping from each of her eyes to roll in matching diamonds down her face. “It is. Elizabetha—Madam Potter—she was kind enough to give Lily the right sort of dress when Lily couldn’t find one in all those silly magazines.”

Lily steps forward, trying not to clasp her hands or fidget in place. “Hi, Dad.”

Dad reaches out until Lily takes another step, standing next to the bed so her dad can hold her hand. “And there is my beautiful baby girl. Look at you. Just…oh, look at you. My Lily is going to be the loveliest bride to ever walk down an aisle.”

“That’s not fair to thousands of other women, Dad,” Lily says, smiling as the waterworks begin. “Thank you. I just—I wanted you to see it. I want you to be there, but—”

Dad pats her hand while shaking his head. “Now, none of that. We all know I won’t be making it to June, and that’s all right. Your James and your Sirius, they’re good lads, and I know they’ll take good care of you, just like you’ll be there to keep their backsides out of trouble. Besides, I couldn’t walk Petunia down her aisle, neither. Fair’s fair.”

“That’s because Tuney—” Lily bites back the recriminations. They’ve all been said, and she’s done with that. Mum is right. Petunia chose her way, and they’ve chosen—they’ve chosen theirs.

_You’ve chosen your way. I’ve chosen mine._

Severus hadn’t been angry when Lily said those same stupid words. He’d been desperate, for just a moment, and then she’d watched as that desperation melted away into that…that dull-eyed resignation.

 _Fair’s fair_.

Severus came to the house during the summer holiday in 1976. Just once. He didn’t ask for Lily, because Lily had told him No More. Instead, Severus spoke to Dad while Lily leaned against the wall, listening to the conversation happening at the front door.

_This is hers, Mr. Evans. I mean, we bought it together, but she paid the most for it. Fair’s fair; it should be hers._

_No, son. Fair’s fair. Lily might’ve paid a pound or two more than you did, but that belongs to you_.

Lily had taken one swift glance to see what Severus was saying was supposed to be hers. He’d been standing there all stiff and unhappy, dressed in a plain black t-shirt and denims, holding an album with dog-eared corners.

Jefferson Airplane. _Surrealistic Pillow._ The record they bought together in London the previous summer.

Then Lily turned and quietly fled upstairs to have another good cry. She didn’t feel like she’d done the right thing, the just thing, or even the Gryffindor thing. It just felt awful. Worse was school resuming, and Lily opened her mouth to say something to Severus—say anything—and nothing would come out. Nothing nice, anyway. All she’d been able to manage was stiff courtesy because, just as much as she missed him, she was also still so _angry_.

In January of their sixth year, as soon as everyone knew that Severus was really gone, James had been the first person to come to Lily. He’d apologized for the shit he’d done, and then said Severus shouldn’t have done that to her, leaving Lily like that.

Lily had promptly burst into tears. James skipped his next class to sit down with her in the Gryffindor Common Room, trying his bewildered best to try and be comforting. Then Sirius found out what was going on, sat down right next to her, and skipped _his_ next class to help make a mess of being comforting, too.

In February, James haltingly told Lily how his grandmother and family had rightfully torn James and Sirius new arseholes for what they did to Severus, for torturing someone and laughing about it. Torturing someone like a Death Eater would.

Lily thought about how she’d watched them torture someone like a Death Eater would. She’d sided with them even though it was obvious that Severus’s anger was just a front, that he was screaming and frantic and terrified.

Severus said something terrible to her, something that made her so angry she wanted to punch him. She decided to leave him behind, let the Marauders have at it while Severus was still hanging in the air.

Like a Death Eater.

That day’s lunch went straight into the loo.

In March, Lily was invited to go with the Marauders to Hogsmeade. At least, that was how it was supposed to go, but somehow she ended up alone with James and Sirius in a much better tea parlor than Puddifoot’s frilly nonsense. James darted glances back and forth between Sirius and Lily while blushing on repeat.

Lily looked at Sirius, then at James, and finally glanced down at the table to find they were all three holding hands. It had just felt so normal that she hadn’t even noticed.

Once it was really accepted, really set in stone, that Lily was dating James and Sirius and wasn’t likely to stop anytime soon, a lot of the Marauders’ secrets came pouring out. The Animagus one had been fun, though Lily hadn’t been inclined to learn to be an Animagus. It just didn’t feel right, though James turning stag, Sirius turning giant black dog—hilarious—and Peter turning cute rat was amazing, definitely something she applauded them for accomplishing in their fifth year.

Then Lily asked Remus what his Animagus form was. The Marauders had promptly extracted so many promises for her not to tell anyone about the mysterious Animagus form that Lily had sarcastically offered them a phial of blood if they’d just get on with it. That’s when they finally got around to telling her that Remus was a werewolf. She didn’t and doesn’t hold his being a werewolf against Remus. It’s not like he went out and _asked_ to be a werewolf.

It’s just that they told her in June 1977. Too late.

When Lily realized, _Severus never lied to me,_ the rush of shame that flooded her nearly sent her back to the loo to finish vomiting out what _Like a Death Eater_ hadn’t yet purged from her stupid, stupid head. She’d had to resist the urge, because Remus was sitting right there, and she didn’t want her friend to think that loo run was about him.

“Are you going to wear your hair up, or down?” Dad asks Lily, patting her hand again.

“Uh—both,” Lily blurts out, because she hadn’t meant to let her thoughts wander so far in that direction. More and more, though, that’s exactly what is happening. She thinks about Sev, and the ways that they both messed up so badly. Lily thinks about how they just _let_ everyone tell them what kind of person they were supposed to be. “I want some of my hair to be down, but not all of it.”

Dad nods. “That sounds lovely. You should have flowers in your hair, baby girl. You’ve already got those lovely flowers on that dress. Wear something nice to match them.”

“Red would clash so much with my hair, Dad.”

“S’no matter. It’s your wedding, sweetheart. You wear…you wear what makes you happy.” Dad’s eyes are starting to slip closed as exhaustion and the drugs drag him back down. “You be happy, and I’ll be watching…and I’ll be so…so proud of you.”

After he falls asleep, Lily casts one of the healing diagnostic charms she’s learned from Euphemia. Madam Pomfrey has a good one, too, but this one is more specific. “Oh,” she whispers.

Mum gazes at her with more tears streaming down her face. “Soon, sweetheart?”

Lily lowers her wand, swallows back the thick knot in her throat, and nods. “Yeah. Maybe…the next day or two. Maybe less. It’s, uhm—it’s so close that I can’t really tell.”

Mum nods and reaches across the bed to grip Lily’s hand. “Let’s go home, change clothes, pack up a few things, and come right back. If it’s—if it’s going to be soon, I want to be here.” She sniffs once, hard. “I should call Petunia. I know what she’s said, but Petunia should know. Life is all about second chances.”

“Okay, Mum.” Lily tightens her grip on Mum’s hand and then squeezes her eyes shut, squeezing out a few tears when she does so. “Yeah. Let’s do that. Britain’s stupid Wizarding War can get on without me for a few days.”

Petunia doesn’t come. Lily isn’t surprised, but she knows Mum is hurt badly by it. She resolves that she’s going to hold that over Petunia’s head for the rest of Petunia’s stupid life. It’s one thing to be mad at Lily, but how _dare_ she treat Mum and Dad like this! How _dare_ she ignore the fact that Dad is dying!

The nurses quickly learn that Lily Evans has a temper, and she isn’t afraid to use it for the right reasons. Those reasons include _Leave us the hell alone so we can sit with my Dad while he dies!_ and _Didn’t you hear me the first time?_ until they get a new batch of nurses stationed nearby who aren’t callous twits.

James and Sirius can’t sit with Lily and Mum at the same time, so they trade off in shifts. The few times it can’t be them, they make certain Mum and Lily are never alone. Sometimes it’s Elizabetha and Harry, or Euphemia and Monty. Frank and Alice stop by, and Frank just gives Lily the biggest, most sympathetic hug she’s ever received, because out of all of them, it’s Frank who really understands what it’s like to lose a dad. Mary and Marlene stop by together, holding hands when the nurses aren’t looking. They give Mum a beautiful grey shawl with silvery-black threads, kiss her cheeks, and leave when the head nurse stops by and whinges about it being too crowded in Mr. Evans’s room. Lily scowls and thinks she’s being a bitch, because what does that bint of a nurse want, anyway? For Lily’s father to die alone in an empty room? That isn’t what Dad wants, and it’s not what any of them need, so _fuck her._

Remus finds Lily alone when Mum has to take a walk to ease her sore, stiff legs. He sees the oxygen mask on Dad’s face, nods, and then wraps Lily up in another _I Understand_ hug, because his mum is gone, too. Then he stays, sitting with Lily’s mum so that Lily can have her turn at a walk.

Lily finds her way to the hospital’s chapel and sits down in an empty pew in an empty room. It’s silent except for the whir of the air conditioning coming in through the vents.

The room doesn’t feel comforting. The cross hanging on the wall looks like a mockery.

Tears roll unheeded down her face. Her nose is all stuffed up, red, and swollen from crying so much. Her dad, Malcolm Edward Evans, worked hard at terrible jobs because he wanted to give his wife and his daughters a decent go. A decent life. Her dad is a good man, an honorable man, one who is so much fairer to others than Lily knows how to be. He doesn’t judge. He just lets people be. Dad kept them all safe and warm and happy for as long as he could, and _it is not fair._

_How is this just? How is any of this right? Why does my dad have to slowly drown in his sleep while Death Eaters hang about in their lavish manor houses, eating nonsense foods and not suffering for any of it?_

_Why, God? Why do you want my dad to suffer this way? Is it because I was bad? That I didn’t listen to someone who needed me, all wrapped up in being a self-righteous twat just like my sister? If so, then_ fuck you _, because Dad didn’t have anything to do with that! That was me. All me. I’ll be spending the rest of this war trying to balance my stupid scales, so if this is Divine Wrath, send it my way instead of Dad’s, all right?_

Lily sniffs again and wipes her eyes. She misses her friend. If Severus was here, he’d be awful at trying to offer comfort, but the fact that it was always so obvious that he _wanted_ to—sometimes that was all Lily needed for everything to feel like it was going to be okay.

Severus is gone for good, though. He’s an enemy in this war who would probably kill her fiancées so much as look at them. Petunia is off living a suburban housewife’s dream life in Surrey and refusing to recognize anyone from dismal, far-away Cokeworth.

Lily still has Mum, and she has James and Sirius now. Sirius’s sane Auror cousin Lucretia. The Marauders, the Potters, Alice and Frank, Marlene and Mary, Arthur and Molly with their five kids, from serious-faced Bill down to crawling toddler terror twins Fred and George, and so many other wonderful people.

She still doesn’t think she’s ever felt more wretchedly alone.


	22. Red, Ivory, & Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re flustered. Why are you nervous?”_
> 
> “I don’t know! If I knew the answer to that, I’d not be flustered, would I?”
> 
> _“I don’t think your own weddings made you this much of a mess.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheer-beta-cheerfully-read by @norcumii the awesome. 
> 
> Happy Hallowe'en or Samhain or Happy Saturday, even. May this be a pleasant distraction from the fuckin' 2020 election everything.

Lily Evans’s father dies on twenty-eighth April. Salazar is left shaking his head, saddened on her behalf. It’s another terrible loss for a new family that has yet to recite their vows to each other.

“Not You-Know-Who, was it?” Nizar asks, though he looks to be on the verge of biting his lip. Expecting these losses is not the same as experiencing them, and even a portrait can grieve.

Salazar shakes his head. “No. Malcolm Evans worked himself into an early grave in order to provide for his family. It simply took a while for Death to catch up with the man afterwards.”

He can’t attend the funeral due to his duties as a spy, but visits the cemetery in Cokeworth afterwards. Malcolm Edward Evans has been buried in a peaceful bit of land, far from the grime left behind by Cokeworth’s abandoned industrial days. He rests in the shade of an ancient oak tree, the earth still so freshly overturned that new blades of grass have yet to sprout in the soil. The monument over the grave, that of a winged Nike with one hand hiding her eyes, is large enough for two.

Salazar stares at the blank space on the right side of the large gravestone that will one day bear the name of Malcolm’s wife. Letters dance over it like cast shadows.

Before Salazar blinks the vision away, he catches a glimpse of a month and a year. August 1979.

Fuck.

Madlyn Selwyn Greengrass, Augusta Longbottom’s grandniece, dies in May. Geronimus Greengrass, displaying all the tact of a toadstool, immediately makes plans to wed again, as he, “Still needs a son.”

Salazar is certain that the entire manor overheard Guinevere Greengrass Macnair screaming at and then hexing her father within an inch of his life. Geronimus is not capable of courting anyone for several days afterward. Not even those among Voldemort’s lot feel sympathy for him. There is pragmatism in wanting to have heirs, and there is ignoring every single bit of Pure-blood propriety when mourning for the dead.

Geronimus Greengrass doesn’t let Pure-blood Death Eater disapproval, or his daughter’s seething rage, stop him from marrying Anastacia Branstone on first June. Jewel watched in utter disdain as the couple were wed and interacted during the reception afterward. She reported that Geronimus must have been cheating on his wife for quite some time, as Anastacia never once acted as if she has just married a man who only began courting her two weeks previous.

When Monica speaks with Salazar later that evening, her opinion is similar. “He’ll be ostracized by the Pure-blood families, of course,” she says, which is one thing Jewel hadn’t mentioned. She might have assumed Salazar to be aware of such already. “One does _not_ remarry without observing a period of mourning, let alone court another during that time.”

Salazar nods. He’d known about the rule against marrying during the mourning period, but not that it included the injunction about courting. Henry has never mentioned it, possibly because he is too civilized to ever consider that someone would be crass enough to court another right after burying their spouse.

Monica takes a sip of wine. “I feel badly for his daughter. Guinevere may be a Death Eater, but she doesn’t deserve to have a father who would prove that he valued her mother so little.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Salazar replies, and decides it is time to keep an eye on Guinevere Macnair. She has never gloried in torture, and participates in battles with grim determination rather than vicious glee. He has also noticed the magic of a very strong glamour on her face more than once, centered around her eyes. Others might mistake that glamour as a beauty charm, an enhancement to the eyeshadow she wears, but Salazar knows better. Abraxus Macnair strikes his wife, and while Guinevere says nothing, she doesn’t seem the type to endure it without fighting back. She is a Slytherin, though; she’ll choose the time and means for her revenge, and gods help Abraxus if Death doesn’t find him first.

There are four pending dates when the Underground knows not to contact Salazar. At all. Fuck off. Do not pass Go in that stupid _Monopoly_ game. _Nyet. Nein. Ez. No. Non_. They have Trinity Sutherland and they have Monica Davies, and Monica is second to Salazar for a reason. If the whole of the Underground can’t handle whatever problem they believe to be so insurmountable that they will interrupt him on those four dates, what fucking help would Salazar be?

Twenty-first June 1979. Thirty-first July 1980. Thirty-first July 1981. Thirty-first October 1981.

Salazar adjusts the silver silk tie as he examines his suit in the mirror, beyond glad that he can still have a suit tailored with trousers that are not tent sails. He has to ask for a suit meant for a black-tie affair, but at least it can be done. Suit jackets and trousers are more form-fitting than ever; he imagines that without proper tailoring, the jacket would be restrictive instead of comfortable. It would not be fun to wear an off-the-rack suit jacket.

The tie is fine, but the black of the suit seems excessive today. He taps the fabric several times, wandering through a variety of colors common among modern men’s suits, before settling on a deep grey with hinted blue undertones. He thinks about it and then makes the pocket square the same color as his tie. Ridiculous addition, anyway. He misses the days when it was acceptable to keep a real handkerchief in that pocket, where it was conveniently within reach. The robes he chooses to wear over the suit are an even deeper, grey-toned violet, which he leaves unbuttoned no matter what nonsense Wizarding Britain has to say on the matter. What is the point of a suit if you’re going to hide it? He didn’t spend money on clothes of this quality, which will no doubt be out of fashion in less than five years, for no one but himself to know they exist.

“ _Pocket watch_ ,” Nizar’s portrait reminds Salazar before he can leave.

“I’ve a perfectly acceptable wristwatch!”

“ _Uh huh._ ” Nizar gives him a dry look. “ _And you’re about to be hanging about with who, again?_ ”

Salazar growls under his breath and returns to his room in order to dig up a type of watch he abandoned the moment it was polite to do so. The chain on the last one he owned is silver, and has tarnished like it, too. He removes the tarnish, restoring the shine to both chain and watch, and resentfully shoves the closed pocket watch into his vest pocket. It’s best that no one ask him for the time, as the watch doesn’t work. This particular pocket watch stopped a bullet in World War I that would have caused him many inconveniences aside from the pain and the mess. Salazar likes it the way it is, dented casing and all.

“Well?”

“ _Polyjuice,_ ” Nizar’s portrait hisses.

“Dammit!” Salazar marches back the way he came, snatching up two phials of properly Preserved Multa Facies Sucus, spelled unbreakable, that are labeled with the name of Samuel Black. He shoves the phials into his trouser pocket, scowling as he walks back to the living room. Muggle-born wizard Samuel Black has resided on the Continent since the wars ended. He’s an older man, but not infirm, who Henry arranges to visit at least once a year. Salazar has limited himself to letters, and the man still has a lively mind. Their height and clothing size is a good match, meaning he won’t have to worry about Transfiguring things back and forth before and after Multa Facies Sucus.

“Anything _else?_ ” Salazar asks his brother’s portrait.

Nizar stares at him. “ _You’re flustered. Why are you nervous?_ ”

“I don’t know!” Salazar retorts. “If I knew the answer to that, I’d not be flustered, would I?”

“ _I don’t think your own weddings made you this much of a mess._ ” Nizar regards him quietly for a moment. “ _Is it because it’s 1979?_ ”

“Maybe!”

“ _Sal, just…go to the fucking wedding, and try to enjoy it like a normal person,_ ” Nizar says. “ _You made it through Monty and Euphemia’s wedding without losing your shit, so you can do this, too. The worst you should endure today is needing to resist the urge to hex Peter Pettigrew into fluffy little individual bits of rat._ ”

“I did not need that temptation put into my head, little brother.”

Salazar arrives early, hoping to wander through the back garden before any guests begin to clutter up the space. Wooden chairs with red cushions and gold-tinted varnish have already been placed to either side of a cobblestoned walkway, though there are far fewer chairs than Salazar expected to find. The décor is minimal, as had been for Monty and Euphemia’s wedding in 1954. Wide white ribbons hold together three roses of three differing colors: a distinctive blood red, ivory, and magic-altered gold. The leaves were left on the roses in each miniature bouquet, granting the wedding the fourth color that so often turns up during a Hindu marriage ceremony.

Henry catches Salazar nosing about, but Henry has had a talent for knowing how to find Salazar since the European wars. “I need to ask a favor of you.”

“Hello and good morning,” Salazar replies, amused when Henry rolls his eyes in exasperation. “What is the favor?”

“Cousins Olivia, Gilbert, and Walter have moved into the manor, after what—what happened on Imbolc.” Henry stutters once and continues. “I don’t want all of the family in one place, just in case, and I don’t want James feeling as if he can’t adhere to the family tradition for a newly wedded Potter.”

“The wards on the cottage in the village,” Salazar says. Henry looks relieved to be so easily understood. “I can make the attempt, but their best hope for safety is for one of the three to be the Secret Keeper for a Loyalty Charm.”

Henry nods. “I have already suggested that they do so. None of them are fond of the idea, but they’re not fools, either.”

It’s while he is visiting the cottage, debating on means and possible methods, that Salazar grows suspicious. With a Loyalty Charm, there should be no need of extra protection. The wards on this cottage are hundreds of years old. They could perhaps be broken without the terrible sacrifice that has destroyed other families in Wizarding Britain, but it would require a great deal of strength. With a Loyalty Charm, the enemy won’t find it at all, and the cottage would be one of the safest places in Britain. At least, it will be such until Hallowe’en 1981.

The Westenberg family is lost. The entirety of the Max family, but for a few households of widows and widowers, is no more. Unless Frank and Alice Max Longbottom grant the Max name to one of their children—and Salazar knows they will not be granted that chance—the Max line will soon be no more. The line of Longbottom will one day become the sole responsibility of a young man named Neville.

Every single Grace of Dover has been killed in this war, and the few elderly Graces who dwelled in Wales are dead. Only two Burkes remain who still bear the family name, and both are men without children. Young Marcus Flint is the only male left who bears that magical family’s name. Alastor Moody is now the last man standing of his entire magical lineage. There is a Figg matriarch left on the Wizengamot, one too old to bear children; her Squib sister could still have a family, but Nizar’s portrait is convinced that Mrs. Arabella Figg never had children.

The Grace family destroyed themselves. The Maxes were already scarce before the war. The Moody clan and the Figgs were victims of the same ward-shattering enchantment that felled the Crouches and the Ancient House of Bones. Every single Hallowe’en but for his failed Hogsmeade attack, Riddle has targeted a family of Blood Traitors.

Salazar finds Henry in the manor upstairs, frowning at a new black suit in front of his mirror. His robes are black, also, but lined on the inside with metallic bronze. Salazar doesn’t see Henry wearing anything of bronze often, and wonders at the change. “This manor has never been placed under a Loyalty Charm, has it? Not for the entire war.”

“I see you’ve forgotten how to knock, just as I’ve forgotten how to greet people.” Henry straightens his tie again, fidgeting with the recalcitrant bronze fabric. “As I have never given you a phrase to memorize, you know that it has not, Sal.”

“Why? You know that without it, the family is in danger of going the way of Bones, Crouch, Figg, and Moody!”

Henry turns around and gives Salazar a kind, weary look. Salazar hates it; it emphasizes that Henry’s hair is thinning, turning fragile and wispy as frailty tries to steal his vigor. “Sal. You are not stupid.”

Salazar grinds his teeth. “You want our newly wedded couple to be living in the cottage in Godric’s Hollow, under a Loyalty Charm, so that if You-Know-Who directs any further attention towards the Potter family, it will land here and not there.”

“That isn’t the only reason for the manor’s lacking Fidelius Charm. I will not hide this house and huddle within it in fear. I did not do so at the beginning of this war, and I won’t do so now. Before you ask: yes, the others are aware, and agree with my decision, else they wouldn’t still be living here. However, I refuse to discuss it any further today.” Henry smiles. “After all, my grandson is getting married today.”

Salazar swallows hard. He blames his own bloodline for this level of stubbornness. “Very well. But if the manor still stands after October, we’ll be discussing this again.”

“That is fine by me,” Henry agrees—too easily, Salazar thinks, but there is little he can do about that in this moment. “Drink your bloody Polyjuice and come downstairs with me, Sal. My son wishes to speak with the guests before the ceremony begins.”

“Multa Facies Sucus,” Salazar mutters under his breath. At least Samuel Black is, as Euphemia promised, of a similar size. It’s a relief not to need to adjust his clothing.

“Well, perhaps there is one more thing,” Henry says as they descend the staircase. “Would you do anything different to safeguard your family, were you in my place?”

Salazar frowns, because Henry is a cheating bastard. “No.”

Henry glances at Salazar in obvious expectation.

Salazar sighs and gives up. “Because my brother would already have done so before I had the chance.”

“What an interesting shared familial trait.”

“Shut up, Henry.”

Monty, Euphemia, and Elizabetha are waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. Salazar cannot hold back a smile at how utterly resplendent they are, each in their own ways. Monty sports more lines on his pale, bronze-touched face now that the war has raged for most of the decade, and his wild brown hair is streaked with silver at the temples. Both make him seem a distinguished fifty years of age rather than older or infirm, especially given the crisp lines of an entirely Muggle-modern black suit. The brown-gold, yellow-highlighted tie matches his eyes, as do the robes he wears over the suit. He has even changed the color of his unnecessary spectacles for the occasion, turning the silver rims to bronze. That does explain Henry’s choice of colors, though Henry’s suit is still more suited to the early half of the 20th century instead of the latter.

Elizabetha is wearing a delicate, dusky pink gown with a silver tone, but paired it with her preferred red and gold sari. At eighty years old, she is beautiful, her hair entirely silver and balm-tamed. Her braids hang in unpinned, shining blue-violet ropes in the sunlight. Euphemia at fifty-four is not much changed than she had appeared in 1971, though she is thinner from the stresses of war. Her hair is still charcoal black untouched by silver or grey, braided in coils that the ancient Greeks would have envied. Her gown is the same dusky pink as Elizabetha’s, but the sleeveless robe she wears over it is her favorite sea-green that matches her eyes. Gold ribbons are braided through the robe fabric’s sleeve cuffs and at the ankle-length hem.

“Why do I feel as if I’ve been ensnared in someone else’s trap?” Salazar asks.

Monty grins. “Because you have. That’s what you get for having someone about with an Alchemy Mastery who lives with two connivers, because James certainly didn’t get it from me.”

“No, he most likely received it from Henry.” Salazar eyes the two grinning women. “What are you up to, and will I be blamed for it?”

“You’re already to blame for it because of what happened on first September in 1971,” Elizabetha replies serenely, while Euphemia retrieves a tall, glass-corked phial and holds it up for Salazar to view.

Not glass; the phial and stopper are finely ground and carved rose quartz. “A stone for love, and for promoting health,” Salazar notes. “What is within it?” If it is a potion, he has never seen anything quite like it. Potions that retain a mist-like quality are not exactly rare, but they’re difficult to brew, but the color for this one is wrong. He can see two different shades of blue, two distinct greens, bronze, silvery yellow—

“This is the Alchemically transmuted love and protection of a parent for a child, based upon the infusion of the magic all four of us bear, aided by the emotional strength capable of being embedded in a Pensieve memory,” Monty says quietly. “Please don’t ask how I managed that, because I’m still not quite sure.”

“We know that my grandson will bear sparks of a golden protective magic because a mother died to protect him…but what if that is not all of the story?” Euphemia asks. “What if it is a part, not the whole?”

Salazar takes the phial from Euphemia when she allows it. “You’ve all been thinking on this for a long while.”

“Literally years,” Henry says. “Though Elizabetha considered it before we did.”

“Keeping a child safe is not only about safeguarding them from one such as You-Know-Who,” Elizabetha says. “In my culture, we imbibe similar things to ward off illness, to keep the blessings of the gods who will watch over the children we will one day bear.”

Euphemia smiles. “No matter what comes to pass…well, there is certainly no harm in helping things along. You could say it would always have happened, given Elizabetha’s thoughts on blessing a pregnancy. We just wanted you to know of our _nefarious_ scheme before we carried it out.”

Salazar looks at the mist again. He isn’t an empath, but it is magic he holds, which speaks in its own language. He lowers the constant shielding he keeps on his ungloved hands to protect himself as a spy among Voldemort’s Court and feels it at once: a gentle, soothing breeze, the unending spring of unconditional love.

“I think,” Salazar says, handing the phial back to Euphemia, “that no matter the outcome, it is still a fine gift.”

* * * *

Lily arrived that morning in a t-shirt, denims, and scuffed trainers, still feeling a bit hungover from a rather alcoholic hen party with Alice Longbottom, Mary MacDonald McKinnon and Marlene McKinnon, Dorcas Meadows, Pandora Alexandris, and Christina Fawley. Christina drank like a seasoned pub crawler, with Alice right behind her, but Christina sat her N.E.W.T.s during her last winter break to graduate early. Lily thinks she would drink heavily under that sort of pressure, too. Besides, Lily doesn’t know of a seventh-year of age to drink in Hogwarts who didn’t take advantage of it, herself included. Christina at least had the excuse of wanting time to prepare for her next-month marriage to Lysander Bones.

The scruffy-looking, vaguely hungover young woman from this morning is gone, because Mum, Elizabetha, and Euphemia are terrifying miracle workers. Part of the morning was devoted to the application of henna designs to the tops of her hands and arms, all the way up to her elbows, the process of setting and drying them sped up by magic. Elizabetha had been rather firm that no granddaughter-in-law of _hers_ would walk down the aisle without it. Euphemia smiled ruefully during the process and said she’d wanted them, too, when Elizabetha offered, but then she turned up allergic to _henna_ , of all things. She’d instead worn Elizabetha’s ivory bangles, a match to her wedding dress.

Mum and Euphemia took turns dealing with or arguing with Lily’s hair, which is always curlier and unruly in the summer months. Hair tonic and patience means that her hair now falls in two perfect strands of fire down the front of her borrowed dress. More of it was left free to hang down her back, and the rest is pinned atop of her head, probably in one of Euphemia’s favorite braided styles. Then they’d used golden pins to secure the crown of ivory roses to her head. Mum showed her the result with a handheld mirror, and Lily started crying. The edge of every rose petal is dusted in sparkling red and gold, and her hair—her hair never looks that amazing. She isn’t patient enough for it.

Thank goodness Lily hadn’t been wearing makeup yet. She wasn’t planning to at all, but then Elizabetha had just given her a _look_. Lily meekly submitted to a tasteful lining of her eyes, the staining and glossing of her lips with magicked products that won’t come off until she uses a potion on them, and a faint hint of sparkling pink blush to cope with the fact that she tends to get really pale when she’s nervous.

She’s getting married. She is _definitely_ nervous.

Lily glances down at her hands again. Two gold bangles, all Lily could tolerate instead of the wide swaths Elizabetha always wears, sit on each of her wrists, so the beautiful designs on her skin and her beloved engagement rings are all on display. “Do I get to see it yet, or am I not going to know what I look like until I see the pictures later?” she whinges. Again.

“Actually…yes,” Elizabetha says, and Lily nearly forgets to stand up in surprise. “This mirror, over here. You’ll want to see all of it, I think.”

Lily really thought the blood-red ruby brooch, the red flowers, and the beads—not glass, like she’d thought, but more tiny _rubies_ —would clash with her pale, Irish freckled skin and ginger hair. Instead, it all serves to make her look like someone else. Lily stares at herself in the mirror, at her braided and flower-crowned hair, at the ivory Edwardian dress with its skirt just long enough in the front to reveal her flat ivory slippers before it dips to brush the ground in the back.

She’d really thought the dress would be too small at the waist. The photo of Elizabetha wearing it had shown a beautiful, slender woman, and Petunia’s taunting was still rattling around in Lily’s brain. Then she’d put on Elizabetha’s wedding dress and discovered that it was too big. It needed to be sized down to fit.

If Lily could think of Elizabetha as beautiful when she’d been at least two sizes larger than Lily, then…then _sod Petunia_ , anyway. Petunia was wrong, just like she’s _always_ wrong.

“I’m pretty,” Lily whispers. Suddenly, it’s a good thing her eyeliner and the hint of smoky charcoal on her eyelids are magicked, too, because she’s weeping again.

“Honey, you’re always pretty.” Mum leans against her and smiles. Her blue dress _does_ clash against the red, but Lily doesn’t care. “Look at the beautiful woman I’m going to walk down the aisle today.”

Lily hiccups and nods, thinking that she’s going to be walking down the aisle with a swollen, blotchy face and a red nose. It’s a good thing James and Sirius already know she looks like a slovenly tit when she cries. “That means I’ve got my something blue.”

“We have something for you, also,” Elizabetha says.

Lily immediately turns around, feeling sort of horrified. “But—no! You’ve already given me—I mean—look at me!”

Euphemia shakes her head, smiling. “It’s not only a gift for you.” She holds out a phial with a pink tint to the glass. Swirling silvery vapor is trapped inside. “It’s this.”

Lily accepts the phial, curious. “What is it?” she asks, holding it up to the light. “I’ve never seen a potion like this before.”

“It isn’t quite a potion. Alchemy was involved in its creation,” Euphemia says. “It’s…”

“It is a tradition of my people,” Elizabetha speaks up when Euphemia trails off, wrinkling her nose in thought. “When a bride is to wed, she consumes things that are meant to bless the marriage, the bride, and any future offspring she may have. This can require days or weeks, but my family began taking shortcuts quite some time ago. Drinking this will eventually help to safeguard any child you carry in the womb, and hopefully for long afterward, as well.”

“It should keep illness from touching them,” Euphemia translates.

Lily stares at the swirling vapor. “Is this supposed to get me pregnant on my wedding night?”

Elizabetha bursts out laughing, while Euphemia covers her mouth with one hand, her eyes overbright. “No!” Elizabetha gasps. “Oh, no, never would I do such a thing to a new bride! One should have at least some time alone with their husband before the complication of an infant arises!”

“Huh. No interference with my birth control, then?” Lily asks, because she does like the idea of extra protection for a baby. She knows James wants kids, even if Sirius is still trying to muddle his way through “making more Sane Blacks.” Lily wants kids, too, but it’s war. Stress alone could end a pregnancy before it has a chance to begin.

“No. None at all. When you’re ready for a child, stop taking your birth control potion. Until then…” Elizabetha smirks.

“Have fun, I think they mean,” Mum says.

“Mum!” Lily lets out a helpless giggle. “Okay, yeah. This won’t hurt any of the Muggle inoculations my future kids get, will it?”

Euphemia tilts her head and thinks about it. “I don’t see why it would. If anything, they would work in tandem, as their intent of protection is the same.”

“It will not keep them from suffering the occasional bout of being under the weather,” Elizabetha adds in her wry way. “The small illnesses should always be allowed to have their say.”

Lily shrugs, removes the top of the phial, and hurries to drink the potion before it evaporates or something. She isn’t certain she drinks it so much as inhales it, but her tongue still feels slick, and she tastes…sunlight, maybe. Except that is usually a scent, not a taste. Magic is sometimes still bloody odd. “Well? Am I glowing?”

Mum smiles. “You were glowing before the potion, dear. How do you feel?”

Lily realizes that she doesn’t feel nervous anymore. “I feel like I’m ready to go out there and marry my two favorite idiots.”

* * * *

When Salazar follows Henry and Monty out into the back garden, it’s to find that the gold-varnished chairs now have occupants, but this is a wedding strangely bereft of guests. Alice Max Longbottom is with Frank, who would recognize Salazar if it weren’t for his current guise as Samuel Black. Next to them is Caradoc Dearborn, chatting idly with Christina Fawley, who is due to wed Lysander Bones next month. If the gossip from the Order is correct, Caradoc Dearborn is to stand as best man during their ceremony, though Amelia Bones will be doing so for Christina Fawley. Mary MacDonald McKinnon and her wife Marlene married by filling out paperwork at the Ministry at some point last year. This angered both the McKinnons and the MacDonalds, and nearly caused a war between two testy and ancient magical Scottish clans—which is why the two witches wisely chose to elope in the first place. Remus Lupin is far too thin for a man of nineteen, especially one of his height. He is sprawled out in his chair as if there is nothing to him but limbs, his blond hair a shoulder-length, wind-ruffled mess. He is speaking to similarly tall Lysander Bones and the much shorter Peter Pettigrew, whose cheeks have rounded further since school ended. Salazar knows that Pettigrew fights with the Order, and often, and has no idea how the young man managed to gain weight while doing so. Most of them lose the weight and start overturning rocks in desperation, hoping to find it again.

Lily’s sister Petunia and her husband, Vernon Dursley, are not present. Salazar isn’t the least bit surprised by their lacking attendance. Regulus Black announced his intent to become a Death Eater during the holidays in bloody 1977, and still seems to be on course for sitting his N.E.W.T.s a year early to graduate at the end of this month. Salazar wonders if Sirius Black sent his younger brother a wedding invitation, or if he thought it only a waste of time and paper. Regulus Black would likely prefer to adhere to his new political views than attend his brother’s wedding… for it is exactly that. Both James and Sirius are sitting together on a bench next to the arbor, and the way they lean into each other leaves no doubt that this is still a romantic triad, not a return to friendship.

Gods, why? Why was Nizar never told?

What convinced magical Britain that Sirius Black could be guilty of his own spouses’ deaths?

“Why such a small audience?” Salazar asks Monty in a low voice as he is directed to a seat that will place him in the second row, just behind Henry and the seat meant for Elizabetha.

“Prior commitments. It’s hard to get out of things when there’s a war on. I think James, Lily, and Sirius are happy with who they managed to snag, and the cousins will be out shortly to hide in the back row,” Monty replies. “Pandora Alexis—she’s now engaged to Xenophilius Lovegood, so that should be interesting—and Dorcas Meadows are both with the Order. Dorcas also works with the M.L.E. and received an assignment today that required Pandora’s expertise. Benjy Fenwick participated in James’s stag night because he knew already that prior family commitment would keep him away. From what I’ve overheard, part of the stag night involved a literal stag.”

Salazar smiles. “There was a humorous anecdote on the news this morning about a large deer being spotted near a row of pubs in London.”

Monty sighs. “Please just never say that again. I’m still pretending I don’t know.”

“Isn’t Frank meant to be James and Sirius’s current supervisor until their promotion to full Auror?”

Monty doesn’t turn his head, so his glare is mostly the result of an intense, displeased sideways glance. “I also overheard Frank being told he couldn’t report the stag, because he was already complicit in the act by nature of his attendance.”

Salazar stifles laughter with one fist, disguising it as an old man’s coughing. “One day, I would love to see someone’s Pensieve memory of those events.”

“I don’t think they were sober enough for that.”

Salazar looks up when motion catches his eye. Elizabetha and Euphemia are seating themselves, so Monty gives Salazar a nudge, stands, and then sits down next to his wife in the front row. James and Sirius stand up afterwards, giving Salazar a clear look at the pair.

James is still keeping his hair short, though that doesn’t stop it from being the same wild creature with a mind of its own, just as Nizar’s had been before he forcefully (and magically) told it to stop. He’s wearing black trousers and a white button-down shirt from the wizarding side of fashion, given the narrow collar and cuffs. Paired with it is a half-sleeved black robe that is fully embroidered with bronze thread with bronze fabric backing, which explains Henry and Monty’s bronzed accessories. Salazar approves of the robe, which hangs to the knee; it’s the sort of thing that might once have had a place in his own wardrobe.

Sirius Black seems to have absolutely balked at traditional wizarding anything, yet still managed to look quite like a traditionalist, anyway. His hair is shoulder-length, like Remus Lupin, though it’s night and day in resemblance, black and curly compared to sun-bleached blond and stick-straight. His white button-down shirt is purely Muggle, though, obvious by its wide-cuffed sleeves. The large collar is popped open instead of being topped by a bow or tie, but there is a tasteful pendant on a bronze cord resting in that open space that hides almost all hint of skin. His trousers and robes are black, a match for James, but Sirius Black’s robes lack any trace of bronze embroidery. Salazar ponders that for a moment before he recalls one of the recent Hindu ceremonies between the Patils and the Shetty family, and the amount of gold worn by the groom as well as the bride. Neither of these grooms are the type to load themselves down with gold, but James Potter likes his grandmother’s traditions. Bronze was a compromise, and an excellent one.

“Okay! Before we tie the knot, literally and figuratively, there is something we need to ask of you all,” James says, which makes Sirius Black tug at his sleeve cuff. “We’re not exactly happy about it, but after discussing it, we think it’s the best way to play things until after the war.”

“I’ll take that bait. What are you lot getting up to now?” Caradoc Dearborn asks, grinning.

“We’re not having a small wedding just because of the war, though that’s definitely a thing,” Sirius Black says. “It’s…so, if anyone asks you about attending the Potter wedding, you don’t necessarily have to _lie_ about who got married, but…”

“But there is no need to mention Sirius being one of the three idiots getting married,” James finishes, and seems to sigh at the sudden upswell of confused muttering.

“Why not?” Pettigrew asks, brows drawn together in a baffled frown. “Just because triad marriages aren’t popular anymore isn’t a reason to be ashamed of it!”

“It’s not that, and I’m _not_ ,” James responds. “We just want to keep the triad part under wraps until the end of the war.”

“Safety,” Alice Longbottom says. “That shouldn’t be an issue, but you think it will be.”

“I’ve learned a lot about how things are for anyone who isn’t a Pure-blood in Wizarding Britain lately.” James shoves his hands into his trouser pockets. “If word got out right now, Sirius would be in danger from the nutter half of his family. Bellatrix Black has vowed to kill any family member she doesn’t approve of, and if she learned that Sirius married a Muggle-born witch and a Blood Traitor, she wouldn’t care that Pollux still considers Sirius to be one of the Black family Heirs. I’d gain two extra targets for marrying a Black and marrying a Muggle-born. Lily was already harassed for dating us in Hogwarts, and everyone just thought she was dating _me_. The Death Eaters would try their absolute damnedest to _execute_ Lily for marrying two Pure-blood bachelors from wealthy, ancient families. Then they would go after her family. After they were done with the rest of Lily’s relatives, they’d come back for mine. Or they’d skip that order and go after the families first, and I won’t have that,” James insists. “At least my family has wands. Lily’s aunt and her cousins definitely didn’t sign up for this war.”

“You realize you’re making mine and Mary’s marriage sound like it was a cakewalk, yeah?” Marlene McKinnon asks.

“Yeah.” Sirius nudges James with his elbow. “It isn’t like we didn’t know what we were in for, though.”

“It’s worth it,” Lysander Bones says, reaching out to clasp his fiancé’s hand. “It’s always worth it.”

“What about the invitations?” Remus Lupin asks. “You did label those with three names, genius.”

Sirius Black grins. “We’re also not stupid, Moony.”

“We’re being trained by a paranoid bastard named Alastor Moody,” James adds. “Those invitations couldn’t be read by anyone except the people they were addressed to. Neat trick, right? If you’re worried about the invitations, though, burn them, or maybe shove them into a Gringotts vault where the goblins won’t let anyone but you have at them. Just—for now, for this…” James bites his lip. “Nobody’s safe during a war, but that doesn’t mean we should be taking the stupid risk of rubbing this in You-Know-Who’s face.”

Alice Longbottom is the very first to stand up and vow she won’t breathe a word of triad marriages at the Potter manor outside of the combined strength of their new family. Not everyone stands, as she did, but every single individual in attendance promises they won’t speak of Sirius the Third Spouse. That includes Pettigrew, which is a surprise, but Salazar still has found no evidence that Peter Pettigrew has betrayed anyone. He remains complete shit at Mind Magic, but everything glimpsed within his mind speaks of a young man who is entirely loyal to the Marauders first, and to the Order second. Salazar worries that news of this tri-marriage will get back to Albus Dumbledore despite James’s precaution, and all because of an Animagus rat who can’t be arsed to shield properly.

When that is done, Sirius Black gestures at something hidden behind a shrub with his wand. The something must be a turntable, or a gramophone, as music begins to play. It isn’t the oft-used wedding march composed by Wagner, which Salazar loathes, but music from _Orione_.

“I heard this piece performed by its creator,” Salazar murmurs as he watches Lily Evans walk by on her mother’s arm. Lily Evans is wearing Elizabetha’s wedding dress, and the result is dramatic and beautiful.

He doesn’t need Divination to tell him what he already knows of Jane Evans’s fate. Her health is already failing. Today she is focused on her joy regarding her daughter’s marriage, but there is no potion that can cure heartbreak. Margaret Jane Evans intends on following her husband into death as soon as she can convince her body to breathe its last.

“Bach visited England?” Henry asks, making certain to keep his voice almost inaudible as Frank Longbottom rises, apparently the man intended to officiate the ceremony.

“In the 1760s, yes.” Salazar has still never quite decided if he likes the opera, but it was obvious that the composer poured a great deal of effort and love into the resulting music. “Is no one going to stand for them?”

“They said there were too many to choose from,” Henry replies. “It wouldn’t be fair to leave anyone out.”

Then Salazar, the Potter family, and the few guests—all of them members of the Order of the Phoenix—witness the first legally and magically binding triad marriage Wizarding Britain has seen in thirty years. Most of it is fairly standard, though Sirius Black complains good-naturedly about being leashed when the Hindu custom of tying hands leaves him attached to Lily on his left side and James on his right.

“You deserve it, Pads!” Remus Lupin calls.

“Absolutely!” is the reply. “Besides, who else gets an interactive wedding with audience participation?”

Salazar watches as Frank, with a grin so like his father’s, pronounces James Potter, Lily Evans, and Sirius Black groom, bride, and groom. It’s been months, and still Salazar cannot conceive of any plan that might save Sirius Black from years of suffering without altering Nizar’s history. He tried once before to alter someone’s historical fate, a failure so spectacular that it led to the very circumstances that caused their death in the first place. He has saved members of the Underground, people now believed to be historically dead, but that is not the same thing as recreating the circumstances of Azkaban.

Some things cannot be changed. Some circles will never bend.

Fuck.

At least he has the distraction of three separate wedding dances that are meant for bride and grooms alone. Several wedding attendees are listening to their first Muggle music; Christina Fawley in particular is absolutely fascinated by a very good recording of Judy Garland singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” the song Lily chooses for dragging Sirius Black out in front of everyone. Salazar doesn’t know if Sirius Black has seen the film, but the lyrics are making the poor man cry. No, never mind; half the bloody people here are crying.

Shit. _He’s_ crying. Salazar is too sodding tired and fucked up for hopeful music right now.

James Potter and Sirius Black clinging to each other for Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” helps _nothing_ in that regard. Fuck, Salazar should have done the wise thing and fled the moment the three newlyweds finished signing their marriage contract.

James and Lily Potter Black dance alone to Etta James singing “At Last.” Gods fucking dammit, Salazar forgot that weddings are evil.

Euphemia approaches Salazar and offers him a flute of champagne. “Are you all right? We’re about to toast the happy trio before anyone else decides to dance, though the food will take a while. We’re having to bring it out ourselves.”

“I’m utterly, completely fine,” Salazar lies, scowling. “I’m going to hide behind a tree for a while and retain my dignity, thank you.”

“You blew up the family manor’s back garden. You don’t have any dignity,” Euphemia reminds him, and wanders on to distribute more champagne.

Salazar glares down at the champagne in his hand. This isn’t near enough alcohol to become pissed.

* * * *

Harry carefully lowers himself down to sit on the back step. “I thought you might linger after the kids were off and the guests departed.”

Beside him, Sal doesn’t move, and yet still Harry gains the impression of a shrug. “This is one of the only days off I’ve had in quite a while. I’m in no hurry to end it.”

“I suppose I can’t blame you for that.” Harry looks out at the back garden, now empty of chairs that have been Banished back to their storage places in the cellar. The tied trios of roses are still in place, adding splashes of bright color to compete with the orange glow of dusk. “It was a lovely ceremony, don’t you think?”

“It was.”

“And yet you’re upset about it,” Harry notes.

Sal lifts his head from his slumped regard of Elizabetha’s flowers. “I’m not upset by the wedding. I’m concerned about other things.”

Harry sighs. “You are in quite the mood, then.” He has seen this before, but he often had brighter subjects to share and discuss. Voldemort’s war has made it difficult for good news to be found. “Is it Hallowe’en that weighs on your mind?”

“This one, the next one, and Hallowe’en 1981.” Sal closes his eyes for a moment. “You-Know-Who hasn’t made a decision. He’ll do as he always does, and decide on his target moments before he collects his chosen Death Eaters and departs. It means I can’t…it will be here, the McKinnons, the Lovegoods, the Shafiqs, or the Goldsteins.”

“I’d thought most of the Jewish families had left Britain for the duration of the war,” Harry says in surprise. He’d thought it wise of them; many of them are intermixed clans of Half-bloods, Muggle-borns, and Muggles, with the rare converted wizard. After Nazi Germany’s horrors, none of the families wanted to face the possibility of a Holocaust repeating itself in Britain.

“Not all of them. The Goldsteins are stubborn, and gods help you if you cross them,” Sal replies in a wry voice. “They’re a scary lot. I suppose that’s what happens if you mix a magical Jewish family with Englishmen who had been Vikings a mere generation past. Some of the Levines are still about, as well, but they’re wisely sheltering with the Goldsteins.”

“Potter, McKinnon, Lovegood, Shafiq, or Goldstein.” Harry runs his tongue along the back of his teeth, feeling the heavy weight of this war on his brow. He really is getting too old for battle, for all that he should still be too young. The twentieth century was a harsh one, but he lived it well, and has no regrets. “Then I wouldn’t worry about this particular Hallowe’en, not yet.”

Sal blinks a few times, as if refocusing his eyes from whatever he’d chosen to stare at. “You know there are members of the Underground whom Wizarding Britain believes to be deceased.”

“You think that might work for Lily and James.” Harry reminds himself to be calm. He has never once given up hope that his grandson and spouse—spouses, now—could be saved from what Voldemort means to do to them. From what he _does_ do to them. Hearing of a plan as more than mere possibility is enough to steal Harry’s breath.

“I know it would work for James. It’s the sacrificial protection that is still problematic.” Sal rubs at his forehead. “I believe the potion you four crafted will help your great-grandson to survive such violence without further injury than the damage caused by the Horcrux itself, but that isn’t enough to protect someone from being turned into a Horcrux puppet. The potion isn’t strong enough. Very little is.”

“Except sacrifice.” Harry swallows. “Willing sacrifice fueled by the strongest love in existence.”

“Yes.” Sal turns his head to look at Harry. It’s always been fascinating to meet Sal’s gaze, to see eyes that are the exact same color Harry finds waiting for him in every mirror. “I have not given up. You shouldn’t, either.”

Harry thinks on some of the preparations he and Elizabetha have quietly begun. “I’m a Potter, Sal. We don’t know how to give up.”

Sal stands and then helps Harry to his feet. Harry doesn’t speak of his appreciation but for a nod. Sal is likely aware of how stiff Harry finds his joints of late, proven by the potions that arrive by anonymous Owl Post once a week. They help a great deal, but magic cannot fix everything.

Then Sal surprises Harry by hugging him. They’ve rarely embraced, the habit entrenched by years of living among Muggles in Europe during the war. Harry wraps his arms around his friend and finds worry, because this man is far too thin. He’d been this thin in 1944, when rations in Germany were scarce. Sal had always made certain the young men and women spying with them ate first.

It isn’t a time of short rations now, but it is still a war, one that is slowly destroying Harry’s homeland. It would be killing them both if Salazar Deslizarse were capable of dying. Elizabetha is faring better, but Harry has caught his wife applying certain balms to her hands and knees, a frown of concentration on her beautiful face.

Sal steps back, his hands resting on Harry’s age-stooped shoulders. “Please set a Loyalty Charm on that day. I have no idea if I could be here in time.” Sal hesitates. “I’m not even certain if I would be allowed to do so.”

Harry shakes his head. “Some things might be meant to be. Come to me on the fifteenth of October,” he continues before Sal can protest. “I know there are more portable means of recording voices now. Could you bring something like that to me?”

Sal nods. “I’ll send it earlier than that. Owl Post can easily deliver such a thing, and directions on its use with it. Just be certain to protect it from magical influences that might mean it ceases working entirely.”

“Yes, that is an excellent point.” Harry smiles at Sal. “Take care of yourself, please. A skeleton is not an effective spy.”

Sal snorts out a brief laugh. “I’ll do as best I can, as always.” Then he embraces Harry again, swift and hard; he grips the sides of Harry’s face and plants a dry kiss on Harry’s forehead. “Don’t do anything foolish, _mi amigo_. I do not handle it well when family is lost to me.”

“I will do the best I can, as always,” Harry parrots, which causes Sal to roll his eyes. “Goodbye, Salazar. I will see you in October.”

Sal gives him an odd look before nodding. “Until then,” he says, releasing Harry just before he Disapparates.

Harry stands there for a few minutes longer, watching as the orange rose of sunset becomes the deepening violet of twilight. Then he turns around, goes into the house, and slowly climbs the stairs that he’s begun cursing as age catches up with him. Levitation. He is going to re-learn the skill, and miss out on these bloody benighted damned _stairs!_

In James’s old bedroom, the tapestry of four Houses still hangs on the wall. Harry gently eases it down from its hook, caressing the ancient linen with his thumbs as he grips the wooden frame. Then he turns it over, the first time he has done so on his own. Magic recognizes his bloodline, revealing the message carved into the wood.

 _I gift this reminder of our home and unified Houses on this first day of Maius Anno Domini 1026. May it ever bless your family_.

Harry won’t disturb James, Lily, and Sirius during their first weekend in their new home, but he thinks, perhaps, that this tapestry should hang in one of the two upstairs bedrooms of their cottage. It would be a pleasing sight to find in a nursery.


	23. Gone for a Burton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stabbings. Just...stabbings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @norcumii is awesome. That is all.

Severus gazes at the _Daily Prophet_ , uncertain what he feels. Instead of being buried among the rest of these sort of notices in the back of the paper, a photo of James Potter and Lily Evans is on the newspaper’s fourth page. He doesn’t need to read the headline to see that it’s obviously a wedding photograph.

“It’s an incredible dress,” is Narcissa’s rather unexpected compliment as she passes by him to sit down.

“It is,” Severus agrees. He knows that dress isn’t something the Evans family could afford, but even in a black-and-white moving photograph, he has the feeling it is old, not new.

 _Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,_ Severus thinks, glancing up at Narcissa. “I’m surprised you would say such a thing.”

“Please, darling,” Narcissa says, stirring her tea with precise movements that means her spoon never once dares to clink against the teacup. “I know that you and Evans were friends in Hogwarts. A Slytherin does not discard their friends lightly.”

“No. No, they do not.” Severus decides not to speak of that subject further. Narcissa is either aware that Severus would still call Lily a friend, if Lily allowed such a thing, or she believes that the end of his fifth year was the absolute end of his friendship with a Muggle-born. Narcissa would never be so crass as to call anyone _Mudblood_ , though, whereas Lucius Malfoy wouldn’t hesitate.

It is still strange to be a guest residing in Malfoy Manor. Severus isn’t certain whose idea it was for him to live here most of the time, though it was Lucius who asked Severus if he would find the manor to be an agreeable place to dwell and work—when the Dark Lord does not need him elsewhere, of course.

“Given the state of the Potter family, it is a wise decision, though I think James Potter should have chosen a Half-blood,” Narcissa continues.

“No offence intended, Narcissa, but why does it matter who Potter marries?”

“The Pure-blood Curse, Severus.” Narcissa pauses after taking a sip of her morning tea. “You aren’t aware of it, are you?”

“My mother remains one of the most closed-mouthed beings on the face of this Earth,” Severus replies dryly. He finds it interesting that she has no desire to join the Dark Lord. His mother has no complaints about Severus’s status in the Dark Lord’s Court, and is young enough to claim a place for herself…and yet she doesn’t. He really doesn’t understand Eileen Prince Snape, and most of the time, he has no desire to try.

“Ah. If you choose to have children, regardless of your partner’s gender, you should remain untouched by the curse. In this, being a Half-blood is to your benefit,” Narcissa explains, resuming her usual, set routine of breakfast on the outdoor patio. Severus didn’t dare do the same until she mocked Lucius’s late-rising habits and asked that Severus join her every morning. “Two Pure-bloods attempting to birth children have, for generations now, most often known two results. In the first outcome, a girl is born first, and the Pure-blood couple in question can bear more children, though they are most often girls. In the second outcome, a boy is born first, and the Pure-blood couple will have no more children afterwards.”

Severus frowns. “But I know of several families in which the first child born was or is biologically male.”

Narcissa lifts one perfect blonde brow. “And with the strange exception of several generations of Weasleys, those families you are thinking of all have one trait in common.”

Fuck. “They’re patrilineal.” Severus hopes his revulsion is clearly expressed. “They murder their own daughters after their birth just to have a son as their known firstborn, don’t they?”

“Why do you think it has become such habit for a Pure-blood family not to announce the birth of their Heir until the baby is free of the womb, alive, and well?” Narcissa counters. “Not everyone is so barbaric, of course. I don’t know if my father was fool enough to ask such a thing of her, but my mother definitely did not comply.”

“You don’t believe in Blood Purity at all,” Severus realizes.

“Yes, I do, but not to the extent in which too many fools believe it should be adhered to. For example, I do not wish my future child to marry a Muggle, no matter how pretty or intelligent they are. I would easily accept their marriage to a Half-blood. Besides…” Narcissa takes another sip of her tea. “Neither do you.”

Severus considers it and decides that if Narcissa is willing to admit it, so is he. He has come to trust her, as much as one can trust any other Death Eater, but she is also a Black. Sirius Black’s stupidity aside, a Black is discreet. “I joined the Dark Lord because I thought our goal was to protect magical blood. I realized too late that it is not. Most of our brethren are only here to curry favor and gain power while indulging in bigotry—and in a sense, idolatry, considering the manner in which some of them worship the Dark Lord.”

“That isn’t the only reason, is it?” Narcissa asks.

“Of course not,” Severus responds in disdain. “Revenge was also a motivating factor.”

Narcissa smiles. “As ever, a proper Slytherin.” She pauses. “Perhaps James Potter grew out of his school behavior and began acting more like Henry Potter. He is a respectable Pure-blood, and though his politics differ from ours, he is not naïve or foolish.”

“Perhaps pigs have sprouted wings, quadrupled in size, and are now capable of acting as steeds for cave trolls,” Severus drawls in response, and Narcissa laughs. “I don’t understand, though. If there is a curse upon Pure-bloods, why is it not simply done away with?”

“No one knows of its origin, or is entirely certain of how it works,” Narcissa replies after dabbing her lips with a silk napkin. “One needs information to remove a curse, Severus. You know this.”

“Is it every Pure-blood couple in England, then?”

Narcissa shakes her head. “It is every Pure-blood couple in Britain. There may be exceptions among newly recognized Pure-blood families who marry other Pure-bloods, but otherwise, this applies to all. I would appreciate, of course, if you do not mention this to Lucius. He is still fool enough to think that Pure-bloods must always breed with Pure-bloods to preserve Wizarding Britain, when such a thing will only make our population shrink beyond salvaging. He very much _is_ a Blood Purist, Severus.”

“I understand.” Severus considers their conversation. “Narcissa, if Lucius proves unable to father an heir for the Malfoy Estate, please do not ask me to be your sperm donor.”

Narcissa smirks at the very idea. “Lucius would implode if I ever suggested such a thing. I did want to suggest you as godfather to our first child, however.”

Severus leans back in surprise. “I’m honored, but Lucius would be against that, also. However, if you do ask him, please allow me to be in a position to witness the face he makes in response.”

Narcissa nods, pleased. “Of course, darling. Since we both know that to be a failed venture already, is there anyone among us you would suggest in your stead?”

“Are you pregnant?”

“No.” Narcissa allows a brief look of regret to cross her features. “Not yet.”

“Then given that you have time until you are blessed with a child, I would suggest Regulus Black.”

Narcissa raises both eyebrows. “Hmm. Soon to be a loyal Death Eater, a man who is loyal to the Black family, a cousin of mine, and intelligent. Yes, I do like that. Lucius would be hard-pressed to find reason to speak against him. Do you think Regulus will do as he swore to the Dark Lord? That he will successfully graduate Hogwarts at the end of this month and join us?”

Severus blows out a disgusted breath. “It’s Regulus, and as you’ve just noted, he is a Black. Not only will Regulus graduate a year early, he’ll do so with perfect Os on his blasted N.E.W.T.s.”

Narcissa lifts her teacup. “Well! To my cousin, then. May Regulus find success and honor in everything he chooses to do.”

* * * *

The wedding announcement for the Potter family is in the _Prophet_ two days after the wedding. The photograph accompanying it is flattering, but shows two spouses, not three. Only Lily Evans Potter and James Henry Potter are listed as marrying. No copy of the marriage certificate they signed for the Ministry is included.

“They truly are intent on hiding it.” Salazar shows the article to his little brother’s portrait. “Pettigrew knows, though, and his Mind Magic won’t stand up to someone with well-honed Legilimency. Perhaps you guessed rightly when you suggested that Albus Dumbledore ordered Sirius Black not to tell you of it.”

“ _Maybe, but_ there are three possibilities,” Nizar replies in a brief return of English. It still happens now and then, though Nizar says it isn’t intentional on his part. It’s safer for the painting’s stability to keep to Parseltongue.

“Three?”

“ _Dumbledore knew, regardless of how he discovered the information, and ordered Sirius not to tell me. That would serve his own ends,_ ” Nizar hisses, adding in the new signs they’ve learned to stay in practice. “ _Second possibility: Dumbledore didn’t know, and Sirius didn’t tell me because Azkaban caused him to forget that part of his own history. Third: Sirius did remember, and wanted to tell me, but had no idea how to explain polygamy and triad-marriages to a Muggle-raised kid. Or he panicked about it, but either way, the result is the same._ ”

Salazar nods. “And all equally possible.” Those are answers they won’t be able to uncover until after Hallowe’en 1995.

Nizar’s portrait hesitates. “ _What did they do about their names?_ ”

“Elizabetha says your mother chose Black Potter, though it’s only on the marriage certificate filed within the Ministry,” Salazar answers. “Her first child by your father, being you, becomes the Potter Heir. Her first child by Sirius Black becomes the Black family’s Heir unless Pollux Black decides to fully disinherit Sirius in order to name Regulus Black as their preferred Heir. I do believe your parents intend for every child born of their family to bear the name of their sire.”

“ _Which will keep two vastly diminishing bloodlines alive. At least until it backfires,_ ” Nizar says.

“Don’t be such a bloody pessimist,” Salazar retorts, but he still doesn’t know how to keep Nizar’s words from becoming truth.

June as a whole is not a bad month in Wizarding Britain, all things considered. Salazar is suspicious of Henry—he knows what it looks like when a Potter is plotting—but given what Henry is most likely plotting for, there is not much he can say or do against it. He would rather assist, and does so by introducing Henry to a Dictaphone, sent by anonymous but rather obvious Owl Post.

_Sal,_

_What an amazing device. Muggles have certainly come a long way since the days of massive reel-to-reel tapes, haven’t they?_

_I need to stop pressing all of its many buttons. That is a ridiculously addictive pastime._

_Henry,_

_They have, yes. What you now own can record tapes that will play in any Muggle cassette player, so there are no concerns about needing a second Dictaphone to pass on whatever it is you’re up to._

_I still prefer vinyl, but I am not the owner of a vinyl press._

_Thank the gods I already charmed it to work without requiring batteries, or the device would already need new ones._

_Sal,_

_How? Batteries are the size of bloody cinder blocks!_

_Henry,_

_For fuck’s sake, get out and about a bit more often than never, please._

If the twentieth century doesn’t drive Salazar to madness, then Severus Prince Snape might. Salazar has never had the chance to have a direct, face-to-face conversation with him, and thus he _still_ does not know if Albus Dumbledore sent a disgruntled young wizard to spy on Voldemort’s Court, or if Severus Snape chose this path and found he regretted the choosing.

Severus Snape does not act like a spy, which is exactly as it should be. He has courtly manners, uses sarcasm as a weapon, appears perfectly loyal to Voldemort, and looks to have cultivated an alliance with the Malfoys. Salazar added Regulus Black to Severus Snape’s list of allies after Regulus joins Voldemort with perfect Os on his N.E.W.T.s, just as the young idiot promised, and took the Dark Mark. Those two spend a great deal of time together, apparently renewing a friendship that began in Hogwarts.

None of these things answers Salazar’s question about a future Potions teacher and spying. Screaming at the stars is becoming an ever more pleasing thing to dream of indulging in.

July brings the Underground good news, though the rest of Wizarding Britain mourns. Trinity tells Salazar that they have a new member, one whose name is now Sarah Jane Frobisher. Severus Snape and brand-new Death Eater Regulus Black, the latter the color of stale cheese, brought Selene Crouch’s body to Voldemort only two days after July begins. Given the timing, Salazar suspects he knows exactly who has joined them. Blythe Petersen would have been proud of his half-sister for abandoning Voldemort’s Court, not to mention casting aside her mother’s insanity.

That bit of good fortune is followed by two weddings. Lysander Bones and Christina Fawley’s wedding was expected, as well as their decision to join the Order of the Phoenix the moment Lysander’s graduation from Hogwarts became official. The second wedding, Salazar did not expect, and the news of it leaves him laughing his way into a wheezing fit. Vivienne Runcorn, a cousin of lost Teresa who also refused the Death Eater family mold, married Iola Amber Rothschild—which leaves Obsidian Rothschild in a state of incoherent fury for _days_.

Jewel elbows Salazar while he is still wearing the guise of Quintinus Hobart. “Stop cackling every time you lay eyes on Rothschild. You’ll draw suspicion to yourself.”

“They’ll think Quintinus to be intoxicated, as he so often chooses to be,” Salazar replies. “Besides, is that not the pot calling the kettle black?”

“A bit. It _is_ very funny,” Jewel admits, her mouth turning up in a rare smile. “Iola Rothschild was a Slytherin, wasn’t she? I know that Richard was a Ravenclaw, because—”

Salazar knows what she intended to say. “Did he get on well with Octavian?”

Jewel sniffs once and composes herself, her smile very much departed. “It seems as if Octavian got on well with almost everyone. I used to think it a trait of a child, one that he would grow out of. I despise myself for ever once believing my son would fit in among Death Eaters. This was not the sort of person he wanted to be, and he died for it while I looked on and did _nothing._ ”

“Jewel.” Salazar waits until she looks at him, flames of self-hatred burning in her green-flecked blue eyes. “You did not realize that torture was not the Dark Lord’s only intent. You believed Octavian would recover from what was being done until the moment when the Killing Curse took your son’s life.”

“I should still have done something,” Jewel whispers. “Even if it meant giving up my life to preserve his. Instead, I thought of it as a _lesson_.”

Salazar casts a partial glamour that enables him to take Jewel’s hand without being seen. “He will not win. I promise you.”

Jewel doesn’t yank her hand free, though he can tell by sudden tension that she is considering it. “You cannot promise such a thing.”

It’s the first sharp nudge Salazar has felt on this matter since he recognized the necessity of informing Desdemona Dunbar of the truth. “I absolutely can promise you such. I cannot die until he does, and I’m old enough now that I’m not in much of a mood to linger more than I already have.”

Jewel turns her head so she is facing the rest of Voldemort’s Court again, but their conversation is not complete. “How old are you, then? Two hundred?”

“I was born on twenty-eighth December in the year 969.”

Jewel’s mouth falls open. “One thousand nine—no. Say no more of this. I will visit your home later, if I am welcome. I would ask you to explain how that can be.” She regains her composure with a spy’s swiftness, aided by a lifetime of Pure-blood mannerisms. “Or did you long ago unseat Nicholas Flamel’s accomplishment in the creation of a Philosopher’s Stone?”

“I am not an alchemist. Every alchemist I knew in those days laughed at the idea that drinking the water in which an alchemical stone had been boiled would grant longevity of any sort.” Orellana was the only one who hadn’t laughed when Nizar spoke of that Stone and its attempted theft by Voldemort. Despite her Alchemy mastery, Orellana still hadn’t conceived of any way to make a Philosopher’s Stone before Death took her. “You are always welcome in my home, Jewel. Very few know of what I will then tell you, and it must remain that way.”

Jewel’s hand in his becomes less tense, though her fingers twitch. “Then why speak of it to me at all?”

Salazar doesn’t need to think about his answer. Since he first met Henry Simon Potter, he has had quite a bit of practice in delivering it. “I’ve a mastery in Divination, Jewel. Sometimes it tells me when there are those who should know, though I prefer not to speak of it at all.”

In the Willow House, well after midnight, Salazar tells her, if only so his bloody Divination will stop prodding at him over the matter and leave him alone for a bit. Jewel is immediately far more respectful and deferential of him when she realizes Salazar is being truthful about his name and origins, which makes Salazar roll his eyes. “Don’t do such things, please. I am a man, not a god to be venerated.”

“You are the Founder of my House,” Jewel retorts. “You will have to cope with some veneration when others come to know your true identity.”

“I really do hope that never happens,” Salazar mutters, but he isn’t certain he’ll be able to avoid it. He knows very little of 1995 beyond what his brother told him of Hogwarts events. He still would prefer not to become an object of others’ worship. The very idea makes him feel ill. He was not treated in such a manner even when he stood as a war mage for his kingdom.

“How do you know that the Dark Lord will be defeated?” Jewel asks, her eyes intense. “I will leave you be on the matter of Salazar Slytherin—”

“Deslizarse!” Salazar exclaims in annoyance.

Jewel’s lip twitches again. She did that on bloody purpose. “If you tell me what you know of the Dark Lord’s defeat.”

“I can tell you that it will take longer than anyone would prefer,” Salazar says, “and I do include myself when I say such a thing. You-Know-Who will cause his own temporary defeat in October 1981, and Wizarding Britain will think him dead for nearly fourteen years. Then he will return. After October of 1995, his defeat will become a certainty, even if I cannot grant you a time when it will occur. I only know it will happen.”

“How?” Jewel asks, frowning. “How can you know these dates so well? This doesn’t sound like Divination.”

“Because I haven’t been born yet.”

Salazar rolls his eyes up towards the ceiling as Jewel turns to face his little brother’s portrait. “Excuse me?” Jewel asks, regarding the portrait in irritated surprise. “What does the portrait of your deceased brother have to do with anything?”

“Oh, I’d best not be deceased, or we may be properly fucked,” Nizar’s portrait replies, grinning. “Come on, Slytherin of our House. Do these features not look familiar?”

Jewel stands up and goes over to the painting, peering at the portrait’s grinning face. Then she falters back and abruptly sits down on the closest chair. “Professor Slytherin.”

Nizar’s grin widens. “Oh, is that what they’re calling me now? I hope I’m having fun with that.”

“It’s—you are called that because the nameplate on your portrait is damaged. Your given name is illegible but for a few letters,” Jewel whispers. “Why would you not be dead?”

“Nizar, could you not have?” Salazar asks plaintively.

“Absolutely not. She needs to know for a reason. Even a magical portrait retains hints of a magician’s talents, _hermano_ , and we’re going to take advantage of me managing English again while we can, because I doubt it will last for long.”

Jewel holds up her hand, as if to stop their bantering. “Please. I do not understand.”

“Right, yeah. So, you think it’s odd that Salazar Slytherin isn’t dead?” Nizar smiles at Jewel. “Our situation is ever so much more fucked up than that. Ready to learn more?”

“No,” Jewel says bluntly. “Tell me, regardless. I have the feeling I will need to know, and I _direly_ wish for an explanation as to why you would say you’ve not yet been born!”

“Awesome.” Nizar’s portrait cracks his knuckles. “Time to turn your view of the universe on its arse.”

* * * *

If July was a series of celebrations and new allegiances, then August is a pile of shit. Salazar is _not_ impressed.

Jane Evans succumbs to heartbreak and breathes her last before the first week is complete. She is buried next to her husband, the date of sixth August added to what Salazar had already glimpsed on her gravestone in the spring. On the nineteenth, another of the married triad loses a parent when Orion Nigellus Black dies.

Salazar isn’t convinced that Walburga didn’t poison her husband to be rid of him, as Orion had recently retreated from several of the extreme stances advocated by the Death Eaters and Voldemort. One of the Underground witnessed the funeral from afar, reporting that Sirius Black and Regulus Black had a civil conversation in front of Orion Black’s tomb before going their separate ways. They also mention that Sirius Black seemed more upset by Regulus Black’s departure than his father’s death. Given what Orion Black allowed others in the household to do to his son, Salazar isn’t surprised that Sirius Black would not mourn him.

Then another member of the Underground asks Salazar to meet in Muggle London, citing a need for utmost discretion. If necessity hadn’t driven Salazar to London, then maddening curiosity would have done the job just as well.

“I have a lead on a potential recruit for the Underground.”

Salazar narrows his eyes at Gina Davidson. Normally, she prefers to go by George Hanscom, but he isn’t the only one who noticed that if George is feeling paranoid, it is Gina’s persona he chooses. “You’re one of the best practitioners of Mind Magic that I’ve ever taught. Why is this a mere potential instead of a certainty?”

Gina taps her short fingernails on the tabletop before leaning over the booth, ignoring the noise of the crowded Muggle pub. “Instinct, mostly,” she says. “I haven’t found anything that would cause me to Obliviate him and send him off, but…”

“But you’re still uncertain,” Salazar says, and Gina nods. “Where do you want to meet?”

“Not at your home. Not at anyone’s home. Perhaps in a field somewhere far from everyone.”

Salazar frowns. “Who is it I’m to be meeting?”

“Chariton Fleet.”

“Chariton _Fleet_ has doubts?” Salazar asks in disbelief.

“I know!” Gina leans back and crosses her arms. “He’s a Fleet, and that branch of the family is almost entirely devout in following You-Know-Who. It was Dagger and Zealous Fleet who brought him in, too. I’d ask Lucretia her opinion, but…”

“I’d appreciate still having her about, too, and not only for this.” Salazar rubs at the furrowed line between his brows and wonders if the twentieth century will be the one that drives him stark raving mad. “Do you know the Brecon Beacons in Wales?”

Gina nods. “Pen y Fan, yes?”

“Could you have Mister Fleet there by midnight tonight?”

Gina checks her watch and thinks about it. “Probably. If we don’t turn up, then the answer was no. Otherwise, I’ll do my best to convince him.”

Salazar arrives early, and spends nearly half an hour in the dark atop a mountain that doesn’t give a beggar’s arse that it’s late August. It’s only ten degrees above freezing, and the wind is vile. It makes him long for Gipuzkoa, or perhaps southern Greece.

He’s only lived on this isle for nearly four hundred uninterrupted years. One would think he’d be used to its abominable need to be cold and damp whenever possible by now.

George Hanscom Apparates in, holding Chariton Fleet by one arm, five minutes after midnight. The disguise George is using that night was fueled by Polyjuice; he timed his last dose well enough that it fades as Salazar approaches. Chariton Fleet ends up gaping at the visage of dead Garen Bulstrode with no hint of artifice.

“Do you believe me now?” Garen is asking.

“That you’ve a way out? Absolutely!” Chariton Fleet replies. “Astounding. I truly believed you to be dead!”

Salazar feels a cool prickle along the back of his neck, one that has nothing to do with the cold wind. He doesn’t know what made Garen suspicious, but Salazar’s sense of Divination is not pleased by this situation. He is now glad he kept his wits and is wearing a glamour. “We’re very good at what we do. The question is: are you?”

Chariton Fleet whirls, nearly drawing his wand, before Garen’s hand on his arm stops him. “I did say we’d be meeting someone else,” Garen says in a dry voice. “Please try not to murder him.”

“My apologies,” Chariton Fleet offers, his tone stilted and stiff. “I wasn’t expecting a stranger to stroll out of the darkness.”

“It’s the top of a mountain in the midst of a park. Everything is darkness but for the moon,” Salazar responds.

“This is Saul,” Garen introduces him. Salazar applauds him for not revealing his full name, but Garen is a Bulstrode. They do not often make mistakes. “He helped me, and if you’re doing this for the right reasons, I’m certain he can help you.”

Chariton Fleet blinks once. “Why would I be doing this at all, if not for the right reasons?”

Salazar already knows where this is going. It’s spoken to him in the way that Chariton Fleet will not meet anyone’s gaze. It’s harder to cast this curse without his wand, but he has not lived this long without learning how to cheat. The magic of the earth aids him when Salazar whispers, “ _Tempero._ ”

“Saul!” Garen yelps when Chariton Fleet’s features slacken. “You’ve said often you dislike that spell.”

“I do. Chariton Fleet: look at me.” Salazar waits until Chariton Fleet lifts dull, yellow-green eyes to meet his gaze, and then darts in past his mental shielding. It’s nothing more than a multitude of razorblades set at every conceivable angle. That is the construct of someone who wants to keep another out of their head at all costs, but he spent too much time building the first layer. His second layer is a mirror of the first, only reversed, but Salazar is practiced, so it is pathetic in comparison—

“SHIT!” Salazar leaps forward, grabs Chariton Fleet and George both, and Apparates just as he hears the first crack of another’s arrival. He goes only as far as Waun Fach, which has decided it’s a good evening to be on the verge of frost.

“Saul, what in the hell—WHAT IN THE HELL—!” is all George has the chance to yell before Salazar has shoved a knife through Chariton Fleet’s treacherous heart and then Apparated them again. This time, Salazar is happy to leave Fleet behind for others to find, though it may take the idiots a few minutes to realize that Fleet died by stabbing rather than a curse.

Salazar takes himself and George to the coast of Bournemouth, which is illuminated by the dim lights of the pier. Then he bends over, rests his hands on his knees, and tries to catch his breath.

George isn’t shrieking protests any longer. Instead, he’s gone far too quiet. “Traitor?”

“Traitor with a tracking spell.” Salazar straightens up, walks down to the shoreline, and uses the incoming water to cleanse his hands and the blade. He’ll have to do so again later to keep the salt from pitting the steel, but he’d rather all hint of Chariton Fleet be gone from his person immediately. Once his hands are clean, he retrieves his wand and makes certain there is no blood on his clothing.

“He told someone, George. Whose face did you use when you made the offer of a way out? The Polyjuice was mostly gone when you arrived on the mountain.”

“Uh—Bernard Hobart.” George’s throat moves when he swallows. “Did they see us?”

“I don’t know.” Salazar gives his own magic a nudge, glad to find his glamour still in place. “You were no longer hidden by any means, though. You’ll be the one in danger. Well, yourself and Bernard Hobart, but he may be fortunate enough to have an alibi for the evening. Or he may not, but he is not where my concern currently lies. Did you mention the Underground by name?”

“Absolutely not!” George sounds offended, but he still looks badly shaken. “You just—I know that we’re spies. I know that we deal with Death Eaters every blasted day, but you just…you just stabbed him. Like it was nothing.”

“Chariton Fleet was not only happy to betray the confidence of the man he believed to be Bernard Hobart, he has a fondness for torture. He hoped that this betrayal, and catching those responsible for it, would gain him You-Know-Who’s affection and favor. I would not be ready to stand and weep over his grave, were I you.”

“You still killed him,” George mutters.

“And in doing so, I gave him a kinder death than You-Know-Who would have granted him for failing to capture any supposed spies in the ranks.” Salazar puts his blade away. “Come on. You’re off to the safe house in London.”

“What? What for?” George asks, though at least he doesn’t protest when Salazar grips his coat for the next bit of Apparition.

“You were not disguised. I have no idea if you were seen. You’re staying away from these gatherings for a time.”

George sighs. “Yes, I suppose that’s for the best,” he says as they arrive in the Disillusioned Apparition point that Salazar crafted behind a tree in Edward Square. “I haven’t stayed in London very often since joining the Underground. Maybe I should think of it as a vacation.”

“Maybe you should think of it as keeping your arse within this flat,” Salazar counters, shaking his head as he leads the way to the pub. “If they realize there were two of us speaking to Chariton Fleet, if someone glimpsed your face, or if anyone is smart enough to look in London for a man meant to be dead—the latter especially would be enough to see you dead in truth. You’re one of the few family members that Monica has that have not embraced a madman, George. Don’t be foolish enough to take that from her because you want to play tourist.”

Outside the flat’s door, Salazar waits for George to retrieve his own key. “You recall the rules?”

“Yes.” George inserts the key and opens the door, letting out a hint of stale air that proves none of the Underground have needed it of late, or needed it long enough to properly air out the flat. “I’ll be waiting for news.”

“You’ll have it the moment we do,” Salazar promises. “Good night, George. There is Dreamless Sleep in kitchen if you have need of it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Good evening, Saul,” George says, and quietly closes the door.

In a sense, it’s a promise that Salazar keeps.

Herbert Dunmoor’s bleating bloody sheep yanks Salazar out of a brief, bleary, five of a morning nap on the thirty-first, three days later. “Edward Square.”

Salazar blinks at the misty sheep Patronus, which stares back with placid patience while he figures out why those two words are important. “Oh, _fuck!_ ”

He grabs his jacket and wand and leaps up to Apparate. He’s already arrived in the square before he remembers that his trainers are still where he toed them off, hiding beneath his kitchen table. “Bugger it,” he decides, and runs across the square barefoot. It isn’t as if there are a multitude of Londoners out and about at this hour, or that they would care.

Monica is already in the hallway outside the flat, being held by Jewel Burke. The flat’s door is standing open. “Fuck,” Salazar hisses again under his breath, and walks past them to find out how much of a mess he’s about to step in.

The mess is all figurative, but that doesn’t make Salazar feel any better. George is dead on the floor only a few paces beyond the doorway, lying on his back, his eyes closed.

“I closed ’em,” Herbert mumbles, his balding head still bent over the still body. “I found him with his eyes open, and didn’t think Monica should see her cousin that way.”

“That was kind of you.” Salazar shoves his free hand through his hair. Gods dammit. “Killing Curse?”

Herbert nods. “I think so. The diagnostic charm was just showing a fading bit of red when I cast it, but I don’t believe it could’ve been anything else. I’m not really sure it matters, anyway. Dead is dead.”

“That it is,” Salazar agrees. He doesn’t doubt Herbert’s guess, though. George was raised as a paranoid Pure-blood when it came to poisoning attempts, and wouldn’t have been felled that way. “How did you come to find him like this?”

“I had a late night. Stopped by for a kip, found the door open, and…” Herbert shakes his head. “George opened the door to someone, Saul. He must’ve. He didn’t even have his bloody wand on him. It’s there on the table.”

“There should have been no one at this door at all,” Salazar says, feeling a sharp pang. None of them have dared to leave George too long on his own over the past few days, not with Voldemort’s Court still full of gossip and whispers about Chariton Fleet’s death. No one has heard a thing about a suspect or suspects, though Bernard Hobart had an interesting evening with his Dark Lord until Voldemort was satisfied that the last man seen with Chariton Fleet had not been Bernard Hobart, after all.

Then You-Know-Who ordered his favorite mad Death Eater to execute Bernard Hobart for the crass stupidity of allowing his image to be used to entrap one of their own. Bellatrix Black was, as always, happy to do anything Voldemort asked of her. The Underground lost a useful candidate from their pool of Death Eaters useful for impersonation, and they learned nothing from Hobart’s torture and death, both of which Sarah Frobisher was forced to witness.

Salazar wonders if a Death Eater, hoping to gain favor the way Chariton Fleet had hoped for the same, took matters into their own hands. He goes into the kitchen, giving George’s wand a grieved look, before he Summons his own silver bowl from the Willow House and fills it with water at the tap. Viewing the past is always harder, but these events are recent. Perhaps that will be enough to spare him a headache.

He has an image frozen and captured on the water when Monica comes into the kitchen. “We need to bury him in the family crypt.”

“That’s a bit of an issue, given that his crypt is already occupied,” Salazar replies. Then he slides the bowl across the table, careful not to let the image fade. “Would you like to do the honors? It’s best we be rid of them before they think to tell another who they killed, and where they found him.”

“Dolohov’s sister.” Monica’s lips become a firm, angry line, matched by the glittering line of rage from her narrowed eyes. “Akilina is most often at home on Friday mornings until well after noon. Beauty sleep, she always declares, while her brother and his wife are already off and ready to do their Dark Lord’s bidding.”

“Then I’m certain Akilina will be glad to receive Desdemona Bulstrode Dunbar as a visitor. Perhaps she’ll even be wise enough to consider it a privilege,” Salazar says. With Marta Dolohov wisely choosing to live with her older brother Maxim and his wife, the house will otherwise be empty.

Monica gives him a cool smile. “It will be a very brief privilege. Please figure out how to remove that corpse from my cousin’s tomb so that Garen may be placed within it properly. It is an honor he deserves.” Then she marches out of the kitchen, a woman bent on exacting swift revenge.

Salazar rests his face in his hands for a brief moment, feeling so gods-blasted tired. Then he lowers them and sits up. “Jewel?”

Jewel rounds the corner and steps into the kitchen, giving everything around her a brief, sweeping glance of curiosity before dismissing it all as unimportant. “I didn’t think it would matter that I stayed out of your sight. You would be aware. Should one of us attend to Desdemona?”

Salazar gave up correcting Jewel months ago regarding their names. She never slips when it matters, and never will. “I would rather you stayed. There are curses and wards on the Bulstrode tombs that I’m unfamiliar with. If we’re to somehow place Garen into the tomb he is already meant to be residing in, I’d ask for your help.”

Jewel lifts her chin. The gesture isn’t haughtiness, but surprise; she hadn’t expected him to ask that of her, and finds it pleasing that he did so. “I don’t know if I would be able to find all of their little tricks, but the Talbots are almost as paranoid regarding our crypts in Chiltern Hills.”

“Thank you.” Salazar stands up, dumps the water out in the sink, and thinks he recalls leaving a pair of trainers in the bedroom he most often uses in the flat. There will certainly be enough lingering socks. “We’ll go as soon as I’m ready.”

“Are we not rushing things?” Jewel asks.

“I know that there are customs normally observed among British Pure-bloods for burials, but we don’t yet know if anyone is suspicious of Garen Bulstrode’s earlier death. If they become so, I have no idea how long it will be before we can do as Monica asked. It would be more disrespectful to leave Garen’s body Preserved and lying in someone’s cellar for a year, don’t you think?”

The corner of Jewel’s mouth twitches. “Perhaps by a slim margin.” Then her visage becomes somber again. “Hurry along. I’ll make certain Herbert knows the correct Preservation charms to use on Garen—on the body. Death by foolishness does not mean that courtesies for the living and the dead should be cast aside.”

Salazar finds a pair of his own socks crammed into a drawer, pulls on a spare pair of trainers, and then stumbles his way into the closest bathroom to wash his face. He stares up at the mirror, his face still dripping. There are shadows under his eyes caused by too much stress and too little sleep, and the latter only occurs when his aging, recalcitrant body decides to allow him the chance to rest.

_Is this my fault?_

Garen was a Bulstrode, raised to be cautious, spiteful, proud, and paranoid about the next person waiting to place a knife in their backs. Monica is one of the few Bulstrodes he has met who is capable of leaving off with paranoid and replacing it with kind, though her kindness has distinct limits. Yet Garen was rattled by Chariton Fleet’s sudden death, and by the notion that Fleet had been willing to betray a respected older Pure-blood just for Voldemort’s favor.

Akilina Dolohov did not find Garen by accident. Garen went out into London, despite being warned not to. Salazar watched that image of the past on the water as Garen fiddled with his watch often, eyes darting back and forth too many times. Nervous. Distressed.

A Death Eater with a vicious streak honed in on that weakness as if it was a broadcasted radio signal, followed him back to the pub, and ended Garen’s life while standing on the front door mat.

If Garen had not opened that door, she couldn’t have harmed him. He opened it anyway.

 _Garen knew the rules,_ Salazar reminds himself, putting a temporary cap on his spiraling guilt. Garen Bulstrode was a twenty-seven-year-old wizard. He knew three years of life as a spy. Every day of Garen’s life after he chose to accept the Dark Mark was a risk, and he then chose to risk it in a way that was not in servitude to Voldemort.

Even the most experienced of spies can make mistakes. Salazar has made more than a few of them himself.

* * * *

September just makes Salazar want to snarl at everything and everyone. It begins with a funeral—more accurately, it begins with figuring out how to remove a Death Eater’s unwanted corpse from Garen Bulstrode’s tomb without incident or discovery. He doubts the Goyle family will take their dead cousin back; it isn’t as if they noticed his absence in the first place.

Monica, at least, is pleased to know that Garen is resting with the rest of their family. “I do hope Alfridus manages to have children who are not fools,” she murmurs. “We’re otherwise now quite lacking in Bulstrodes.”

“You still have Eleanor,” Salazar says.

Monica huffs and rolls her eyes. “You and I both know that she does not count.”

Septimus Weasley loses his last and eldest sibling, Varius Weasley, during the second week of September. The Weasley patriarch had been fighting in the war, but it was not a cast spell that felled him. Varius Weasley, aged ninety-one, was fortunate enough to die in his sleep of natural causes exacerbated by the stress of wartime. His widow, Anna Selwyn Weasley, seems alternatively grieved and relieved that his death was a peaceful one.

Alice Bainbridge, a younger cousin of Alice Bainbridge Morgan, joins Voldemort’s Court on her nineteenth birthday. Charles Bainbridge might possibly be tearing out his hair at his granddaughter’s actions, but there is little he can do to stop her. She is one of several Bainbridge idiots who take Cuthbert Bainbridge’s unyielding Wizengamot neutrality as a _sign_ that their family is for Voldemort, after all. The fools already harbored Pure-blood dominance ideals, and thus have decided to be “brave” and join the Dark Lord to prove themselves loyal to the family patriarch. Not even Cuthbert Bainbridge’s public Wizengamot announcement denouncing his Death Eater family members convinces them otherwise, and Salazar despairs of their stupidity.

Among Wizarding Britain’s witches and wizards, it seems foolishness is a contagious disease. Geoffrey and Vivian Hobart Prewett, Geoffrey’s twin, Monica, and her husband, Oliver Derrick, all make their standing within the Prewett family clear by swearing fealty to Voldemort. The Wizengamot must finally have decided upon Alfred Prewett’s guilt and stuffed him into Azkaban, as only Frances Carrow Prewett is there to greet her children and in-laws. Muriel Prewett is yet another one who now has to stand up in the Wizengamot and growl out a firm denunciation of her niece and nephew’s abominable life choices. From the Order of the Phoenix, Arthur Weasley reports that his wife is staunchly disgusted, and compared her cousins to her children’s used nappies. Lucretia Prewett just wants to strangle the lot of them.

Marcus and Irene Selwyn Talbot, after an extended period away touring the Continent, return to England and accept the Dark Mark with Impatience Selwyn’s proud blessing. Jewel spends the entire mockery of a ceremony grinding her teeth.

“You cannot kill your cousin, Jewel.” Not that Salazar is entirely opposed, but he does prefer it if the Underground isn’t forced into the necessity of killing off family members—with certain notable exceptions.

“Then you kill the idiot for me,” Jewel retorts. “His parents are too dead for me to blame them for his current stupidity!”

“I’ll think about it—oh, fuck me,” Salazar mutters in dismay.

Jewel looks offended by the crass statement until she sees who caught Salazar’s attention. “Oh, _no._ ”

Bartemius Crouch Junior is standing with his cousins, Allenford Selwyn Junior and Hector Selwyn, who are in the obvious position of acting as Barty Junior’s patrons for his introduction to Voldemort. Barty Junior is smiling as if he is having a grand time, as if he would prefer to be nowhere else in the world but standing in a roomful of Death Eaters.

“I need a distraction,” Salazar declares. As he is currently portraying Jewel’s flighty, brainless cousin Alexander Talbot, this is not an unusual occurrence. “I can’t bloody well watch that young idiot be Marked. Not him and not today,” he adds in a tone meant only for Jewel. “Sarah and Cane are both present if you need assistance.”

“Go,” Jewel says, though she looks as enthused as a prisoner awaiting their execution. “I’m torn between feeling sympathy for the young fool, and vicious pleasure that Bartemius Senior’s stupidity will grant him exactly what he deserves.”

Salazar pays an early October visit to the house where his little brother will spend most of his childhood. He doesn’t visit with its occupants, as it might be too tempting to hex them. As distractions go, it probably isn’t the best decision he could have made, but he couldn’t think of another one.

Besides, he’s a bit busy being distracted by how terrifyingly alike everything is in this small neighborhood. Subdivisions in this area tend to be built along similar lines, yes, and Little Whinging is worse than most, but Privet Drive and its immediate neighbors are truly eerie.

It won’t be until August 1991 that someone else showcases this disturbing _alikeness_ in a film. Salazar might not remember many details of the film later, aside from the protagonist’s hands, but the scene of cars departing in the same moment from houses built as carbon copies of one another, and those cars returning to their houses at the same time in the evening—that, he will never forget.

“I’m not one to use the man’s name often, as I feel it’s rude, but _good Christ,_ ” Salazar murmurs. He chooses to sit on a short brick wall fronting the walkway while using the Invisibility Charm, as he’d rather not interact with those who would wish to live in a place such as this.

Petunia Dursley seems to have misplaced the step where a young girl learns to grow wider at the bosom and hip, and is just as thin as she’d been at age thirteen. She is, at least, a fair bit taller. Salazar doesn’t think she suffers from any sort of eating disorder, but decides to check with a subtle charm, confirming it was nature which decided upon her rail-thin nature. Petunia is not only healthy, she is already pregnant. The fetus’s existence has the correct timing to become the child who will be christened Dudley Dursley at birth.

In a single hour, Salazar witnesses Petunia Dursley spying on neighbors, ringing up another to gossip about it, and sending off a young pollster with scathing words about his poor upbringing, obvious by his wardrobe, his foolish political choices, and his obvious lacking intelligence. She is visibly pleased with herself when the young man leaves her doorway on the verge of tears.

“I already knew my brother had excellent control, but seeing this?” Salazar shakes his head. “That you would also treat a magical child in that manner only tells me how much of a fool you truly are. Or did you so readily forget the incidents of accidental magic that your sister no doubt had as a child?”

Perhaps Petunia Dursley made herself forget. That would not surprise him, either.

When the family car pulls into Number 4 Privet Drive that afternoon, Salazar has his first look at an adult Vernon Dursley that didn’t come from a memory or a grainy newspaper photograph. The man is immense, as if to counterbalance his wife. Unlike Petunia, a cast charm reveals that Vernon Dursley is not in the health expected of a man who is only twenty-seven years of age. His blood pressure is too high, though there are not yet any outward signs of ill health. “You either sensibly take medication for your blood pressure, or your veins are resilient, else you would not still be alive in 1995.”

Salazar startles in place when he hears Vernon Dursley bawling for supper. Not only is Vernon Dursley within his sodding house behind closed doors, but Salazar is _across the bloody street._ Petunia Dursley is not above shouting back that Vernon had best have some patience, or he can find his supper elsewhere. Her husband subsides with a meek capitulation that is still very loud.

“Ah, the dulcet tones of a happy marriage.” Salazar wonders how often the Dursley’s neighbors have wished these cookie-cutter houses had been built with thicker walls.

Salazar leaves the neighborhood not long after that, jaw clenched, magic on the verge of sparking at his fingertips. He would spare Nizar this childhood, even if it was only in part, and he cannot.

Truth is often a bitter thing.


	24. Promises to Keep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Whose woods these are I think I know.  
>  His house is in the village, though;  
> He will not see me stopping here  
> To watch his woods fill up with snow.  
> _
> 
> _My little horse must think it queer  
>  To stop without a farmhouse near  
> Between the woods and frozen lake  
> The darkest evening of the year._
> 
> _He gives his harness bells a shake  
>  To ask if there is some mistake.  
> The only other sounds the sweep  
> Of easy wind and downy flake._
> 
> _The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,  
>  But I have promises to keep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep._
> 
> —Robert Frost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit as always to the amazing @norcumii for the encouragement. 
> 
> In the meantime... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWfIYeEWD-w&list=PLjt2fQTpfr3GxjbIAIcZOuK83KyS1s5og&index=160
> 
> Suffering is more fun with friends.

Salazar has no idea what words the four Potters recorded on the cassette tapes he is given, and has no desire to find out. These are not for him. These tapes are for James, Lily, Sirius, and one day, should the cassettes survive long enough, their words will also be for Nizar. What he prefers is to spend the hours granted to him on the fifteenth of October in the family’s company, which has always been soothing. How James came from this household and acted as such a cruel lout for five years is something Salazar still cannot comprehend.

Henry asks for Salazar’s company in his office, the manor’s former gentlemen’s smoking room on the ground floor. Massive windows stretch nearly from floor to ceiling to let in afternoon light, casting prisms from the two glasses filled with Henry’s preferred brandy. They’re seated in the armchairs before the burning fire in the hearth, a table between them, and Salazar stretches his feet unashamedly towards the flames. The weather turned chill early this year; he suspects England is going to see storms of ice and snow it most often prefers to avoid.

Henry is turning the Dictaphone around in his hands, revealing how much age and worsening arthritis have twisted his fingers. He has reached a state of near-fragile age decades too early for a wizard. The European wars were not kind to either of them, but Henry bears more of its physical weight. Salazar is the one who struggles with the invisible scars all of these bedamned wars have left behind.

When he pushes a button and the device’s cassette door opens, Henry still seems charmed, despite owning one of the devices for months now. He gently closes the cassette door closed. “It still amazes me that Muggles have reduced the size of these recording devices to such a great extent. It isn’t much larger than my hand.”

Salazar smiles, reaches into his jacket, and pulls out the second device. “I’ve recently been shopping. Meet the portable version.”

Henry laughs and picks up the little Micromite. “Even better!”

“That one is brand new.” Salazar has become fond of the convenience of cassettes, though they will never replace his love for vinyl when it comes to music. The difference in quality of sound is far too obvious. “Microcassettes for dictation machines are a recent Muggle phenomenon. I believe that one was just released for sale last month.”

Henry takes a moment to poke at the microcassette after opening its door with the proper button, but makes no move to remove the tiny cassette from the Micromite case. “I suppose you’d like to get on with the reason why I asked you here today.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t arrive until late afternoon.” Being so late to an appointment established months ago in June is an appalling breach of manners, even to a man who has seen the nature of courtly manners change so many times with the centuries.

“Business,” Henry surmises. “I understand.”

Salazar nods. He supposes “business” is as accurate a term for the Underground as any. “What is it you would ask of me, Henry?”

Henry places the Micromite on the little table between them. “Here you are.”

“Keep it,” Salazar says. “You might think of something else you wish to say. Each side of the tape grants you thirty minutes.”

Henry gives Salazar a look of resigned acceptance. “Very well. Thank you for the gift.”

Salazar thinks if that is to be a gift, then it isn’t the last thing he would prefer to give—but he has nothing else to offer. They are, as ever, as prepared for the unknown as it is possible to be.

“Aside from the cassettes I’ve asked you to give to James and his family, I’m asking you about Hallowe’en, of course.” Henry keeps his eyes on Salazar’s face. “We’ve known since the destruction of the ancient Bones family wards in 1973 that any family could be at risk, any time.”

“You have no idea how much it frustrates me that You-Know-Who has kept that secret so _well_ ,” Salazar growls. All he is certain of after six years is that it isn’t Voldemort himself conducting that ritual, spilling the blood of a murdered innocent and directing the power it creates. It’s someone within the Inner Circle, their identity kept so secret that not even a whisper of it has ever reached Underground ears.

“From the diatribes I’ve heard from Monty, you are not the only one to feel that way.” Henry sighs and picks up his glass. “ _If_ You-Know-Here comes here on Hallowe’en, then I am a Potter, Sal. I did not run from Grindelwald, and I will not run from that arrogant bloody upstart who titles himself a Lord.”

Now Henry turns his gaze away. “I would ask that you stay away from here on Hallowe’en night.”

“I can’t do that. Not unless magic herself prevents me from being here.”

Henry rolls his eyes. “Stubborn old goat,” he mutters. “Sal. If You-Know-Who does come here, then you and I both know it was meant to be.”

“Horse shit,” Salazar retorts flatly. “You could say the same of the assassination attempt against you in 1971, and yet I still saved your stubborn backside, Henry Potter.”

Henry smiles and then tops off their brandy. “I didn’t think you would agree to that. Still, I had to try.”

Salazar glares at him. “You utter arse.”

“I have been accused of being so much worse.” Henry nudges Salazar’s glass closer. “Drink up, fool. There is no sense in letting good brandy go to waste.”

“Then what _do_ you want, if you’ll lead off with such a ridiculous request?” Salazar asks.

Henry sips his drink and then stares at the flames. “James, Lily, and Sirius come first. Without question. After their safety is assured, then it is Euphemia and Monty you should see to. Only after that are you to focus any of your efforts on the cousins, Elizabetha, or myself. Yes, Elizabetha is in agreement with me on this. My cousins, knowing of the danger, prefer it be the younger ones who survive as well. That is what I would ask.”

“That, at least, I can do.” Salazar’s fingers curl until his nails are pressing into the wooden front of the chair’s armrests. He isn’t surprised to hear such a thing, not from Henry. “I understand your reasoning, but if you’ll not flee when danger arrives, then for gods’ sake, at least make a bloody Port Key!”

Henry reaches out and pats Salazar’s hand, as if Henry were the ancient one and Salazar the stubborn younger man. “I could make all the Port Keys in the world, but Elizabetha would not leave this house without me. Monty would never leave without the two of us, and Euphemia would, of course, never be convinced to abandon her husband. If you come to their rescue, you might have to drag them out.”

Salazar’s throat tightens in grief, for all that Hallowe’en is sixteen days from now. This is his family, however distant, and they stand willingly in the path of approaching danger that Salazar cannot stop. It makes him feel as if he is failing in every vow he has ever made.

Henry makes an amused sound. “Don’t worry. There will indeed be Port Keys, though I’m certain they will sit unused, whether or not Death Eaters arrive to soil my front lawn. I did send warning to the other families you mentioned, though. The Goldsteins sent a polite letter in response thanking me, but they have something a bit more than ancient wards for a Death Eater to contend with. The Lovegoods spoke similarly. I’m quite certain that I do not want to know.”

“Guardian elementals. No, I wouldn’t want to contend with their lot, either.” Godric’s keep in Somerset was too far from Griffon’s Door for those local denizens to bestir themselves in protection of a human home, and that is still true today. Not once has Salazar sensed their presence on Potter lands. “Perhaps we’ll all be fortunate enough for You-Know-Who to be eaten by one,” Salazar says, even though they both know that during this first war, such is not to be.

Henry smiles. “May You-Know-Who be such a complete fool in the years to come that he manages to do exactly that. It would be nice of him to save the rest of us the trouble.”

“I will most certainly drink to that,” Salazar replies, raising his glass. The chime of good crystal lingers on the air for a very long time.

After dinner, Elizabetha shares tea with Salazar in the starlit solarium, a stiff Assam that has been her favorite since he first met her. “Ahoi Ashtami occurs on the thirtieth of this month,” she tells Salazar. “Euphemia was not raised to my faith, but this time, she says she will join me in my fast.”

Ahoi Ashtami, the day mothers fast for the health and safety of their children. “I didn’t know you observed that one.”

“It is not as common in Haryana as it is in other parts of my family’s homeland, but I have done so in my own way since Monty was born,” Elizabetha says. “It seemed proper then, and it seems especially so now.”

“It does.” Salazar briefly closes his eyes before he can face her again. “You know I will look after them. I always have.”

Elizabetha smiles and dips her head in a subtle bow. “And I and my family have ever been grateful. No matter what occurs on the last day of October, Sal, do not fear for me. I’ve lived a good life with a kind husband in a wonderful home. I am proud of my son and all Monty has accomplished, and of the daughter I have in Euphemia. I have a grandson who is strong, who learned the right sort of lessons at the right time to become a good man, one who then earned the love of two others who also learned their lessons well. I may never get to meet him, but my great-grandson will be the product of our combined families, and he will do amazing things that give me no cause to regret.”

“I didn’t think Lily was yet pregnant, not for one who would be due in late July.”

“No, not yet.” Elizabetha tilts her head, her warm brown eyes a bit distant as she indulges her own magical gift. “November. Sometime in November. James will be the boy’s father. Her pregnancy will be a fine distraction from their grief. Sirius, Lily, and James will need the hope a new child brings if they are to lose so many of us in but a single year.”

“They would be in need of hope, yes. I suppose I shall have to find my own distraction,” Salazar whispers.

Elizabetha’s smile is full of serene certainty. “Sri Devi favors you. Parashurama guards your steps. Your own gods rest in your shadow, riding the blessing of the wind. The first part of the solution to the puzzle you seek to solve has already placed itself before you. Soon, you will find the other half, and with it, your distraction.”

That is a great deal to attempt to reconcile at once, so Salazar says the only thing he can. “Thank you.”

Euphemia walks through the back garden with him that night, their path lit by the occasional burning lantern hanging from tall iron posts. “I’ve always loved it out here after dark,” she says. “All it takes is a stroll down to the river, and the stars become the map of the sky. I could never see them half so well in Cardiff.”

Salazar glances up. “I saw them when the keep on this land was Griffon’s Door, and the village that looked to that keep for protection was Givelcestre. Saint Andrew’s church was the only other domicile to cast light at night that might interfere with a view of the sky.” The stars are still beautiful, but to see that same wondrous tapestry now requires a trip to remote, high places where no humans dwell. “Godric would claim he knew little of the stars, and then spin tales of their constellations from every culture he knew of.” Stories regarding the sky had been one of the first things Salazar and Godric had bonded over aside from the battle tale that created that literal blasted valley.

“All Hogwarts thinks of now when they think of Godric Gryffindor is a warrior, a knight, a soldier. He would dislike that, wouldn’t he?” Euphemia asks.

“He would. He would never hesitate to fight when it was needed, but he much preferred the peace of telling the stories of history to the young ones. My brother was the school’s Defence teacher. Godric taught them history, and of morality.”

Euphemia smiles. “I would have loved to meet him—the man, not the myth. The paintings of the Founders in the Entrance Hall were not very…vibrant.”

“And mine is a prank,” Salazar says, making her smile widen. “Besides, I’m all but certain that Godric is haunting me. You may still yet have your chance to meet the annoying English magician who forgot to stop being Anglo-Saxon.”

“Soon, too, maybe,” Euphemia agrees, her smile fading a little. “But I don’t want to discuss such things right now. If I dwell, I may spend the remainder of my days in fear, and I refuse to do so. I may not be a warrior, but they will not claim such an easy victory from _me._ ”

“Now that is the fire of a Brittonic magician,” Salazar says.

Euphemia laughs. “I’m Welsh, Sal. I’m not sure we know how to be anything else.”

Monty is the one who worries about Hallowe’en the most, and confesses as such while they sit alone downstairs after midnight, the rest of the household upstairs and abed. “I know my dad, Sal. This is our home, and if we’re a target of that bloody madman, this is the rock Dad will want to stand upon.” He sighs. “I truly thought Euphemia and I had time to try for another child. She still has monthlies, and…”

Salazar reaches out and presses his hand over Monty’s when he trails off, his voice cracking. “I wish you’d both had the bounty of children you desired.”

“I’m glad we have James, but sometimes I wonder if someone cursed my grandfather during the war,” Monty says. “That bloody Pure-blood curse. Just me from Mum and Dad, and just James from Euphemia and myself…”

“You’re _not_ cursed,” Salazar insists. He performed thorough magic to make certain of it, some of which Nizar had to teach him. The Pure-bloods as a whole are not cursed either, merely unable to understand what magic is trying so desperately to tell them. “Even though a cursed man wishes you ill.”

Monty nods, though he doesn’t look convinced. “You know I won’t leave Dad to face You-Know-Who alone.”

“I know it,” Salazar replies. “So does Henry. We both know your father would prefer otherwise, but he won’t try to take that choice from you.”

“Mum will want to be right there with a wand and the mantras meant to curse the enemy.” Monty swallows with a dry click. “Even Euphemia will fight with us, and you know how much she hates it.”

“I know.” Henry told Salazar that the few cousins left to the Potter line, who dwell here now for the safety of the manor, plan to remain and fight, also.

“Do me a favor, yeah?” Monty swallows again and then blinks until his eyes cease to shine with unshed tears. “I know what that bastard and his people do to the homes of declared Blood Traitors. Don’t let the Ministry take this place away from James, even if there’s just a pile of rubble left afterwards. This land is what matters, and it’s been in our family for a very long time now. Make certain James doesn’t lose it. Please.”

That is a request Salazar can easily grant. “I swear the Ministry will never claim these ancestral lands.” He hesitates. “Is there—no. I will simply say this. I will be here, if the means are granted to me. If it is within my power to do so, I will stand with our family on Hallowe’en.”

Monty tightens his grip on Salazar’s hand. “James, Lily, and Sirius come first. When Harry is born, he does, too. You know this.”

“I do,” Salazar reassures him. “It isn’t as if any Death Eater would be capable of killing me.”

“If you were captured—”

“No.” Salazar hesitates a moment, but this is Monty, and he will understand all the reasons why Salazar speaks these words. “It is far easier to cast the Killing Curse upon yourself than is currently believed.”

Monty stares at him, wide-eyed, before nodding once. “You only have to mean it.”

“That is all the spell has ever required,” Salazar replies. “If I can be here, and all is still lost, they will quickly lose interest in a supposed corpse.”

Monty swallows again. “Do you think if I told Mum and Dad, they would take that option if everything goes to shit? I don’t—I don’t want Death Eaters to do to them what they did to Uncle Charles.”

“I don’t know,” Salazar says in complete honesty. “Your father remains Protestant enough that he might find it an abhorrent act. Your mother may prefer to spite her enemies into losing their tempers and acting accordingly…or Elizabetha will stand there and curse Death Eaters until the earth beneath their feet begins to protest.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Mum.” Monty slips off the false spectacles he still wears, as the family cousins aren’t aware of Sana Visio and its effects. Salazar wonders if they should receive it before Hallowe’en, or if they would have no trust in what he offered. “I’m worried about Euphemia.”

“As am I. No matter what, though, do not take the choice from her. Not from any of them.” Salazar has to close his eyes for a moment. “They know what this war means. They’ve always known. Euphemia saw her sister and the last of her mother’s family fall because they chose to stand on the wrong side of the line. She understands, Monty.”

Monty breaks down in a brief fit of sobbing, resting his head on Salazar’s shoulder. “We’ve been married now for twenty-five years. Is it selfish of me to say that I don’t wish to live without her?”

Salazar thinks of how lost he’d been after Orellana died. Then it was Marion. Katarina. Ismene. Isis.

“No, Monty. It isn’t selfish. The trick, if the opportunity of survival is granted, is remembering who and what you’ll be fighting to survive for.”

Monty makes a strangled sound and embraces Salazar. Salazar blinks his eyes clear and holds on, choking on regret.

How many times has he said farewell, knowing that it might be for the last time? How many friends has he walked away from, with no choice but to leave them to their fate?

Too many. Gods of his childhood, it’s been too many for so very long.

Salazar sleeps that night in the manor, in the guest room that he’d seen often enough in the late 1940s to still think of as his. Breakfast could so easily be a solemn affair, shared with only the five of them in the bright solarium, but the Potters refuse to let the future mar the present. Salazar can’t remember the last time he smiled so often, not when the expression was truth rather than a spy’s falsehood.

Morning sluggishness turns to gossip in short order. Salazar learns that Death Eaters attacked the childhood home of Septimus Weasley and his siblings while its current residents were away visiting family in Cornwall. The Burrow House in Devon was gifted to Arthur Weasley after he became the first of Septimus and Cedrella’s children to marry. Molly Prewett Weasley and her husband are both exceptionally stubborn beings, so instead of giving up on a home that had been demolished, they put it back together. By themselves.

“It is…not quite the same house any longer,” Monty says in a tone of careful diplomacy. “But the floors are level, the pipes function as they should, the roof doesn’t leak, and there is still room enough for their growing family.”

“The twins were an accident,” Euphemia agrees. “A blessing, but still an accident. After what’s happened, though, I highly doubt that Molly’s current pregnancy is an accident.”

“Christina’s pregnancy is certainly no accident, either,” Henry says.

“Christina Bones is pregnant already?” Salazar asks, surprised.

Elizabetha nods. “I did not think it would take long, not after witnessing their wedding.”

“She’s due next August, I think,” Euphemia says. “Lysander is beside himself.”

“Lysander is so much of a mess that he might as well stay home from the Order meetings,” Monty observes dryly. “Was I that much of a disaster when Euphemia was pregnant?”

Henry snorts. “You might’ve been worse.”

“Don’t look at me,” Salazar protests, holding up both hands. “I’ve no idea if Henry has the right of it or not. I think I recall being delirious through that part of 1959.”

“You remember that I told you, and you were coherent when James was born,” Euphemia teases him. “That was good enough for me.”

“Born under the serpent’s star. I wonder why,” Henry adds, glancing at Salazar.

“Given how deer follow your family about, I have no idea,” Salazar responds, shaking his head. “I’ve always meant to ask why that Patronus follows your family line. Your grandson is even a bloody stag Animagus.”

“I was still pretending not to know that about my son, thank you,” Monty says crossly. “Dad?”

“It began with me, actually.” Henry puts down his tableware and rests his chin on his hands. “When I was younger, before I met Elizabetha, my Patronus was a fox. After Elizabetha agreed to marry me, it became the stag.”

“I have always equated it with Saraswati’s blessing,” Elizabetha says. “My Patronus, after all, is the doe Rohit.”

Salazar would have asked more—he scarcely recalls anything of that Hindu tale—when he is interrupted by a large Python Patronus crawling through the solarium’s glass wall. “Oh, bloody hell.”

Monty raises an eyebrow. “That’s Benjy’s Patronus. Is that for me, or for you?”

The python Patronus raises its head, unhinges its jaw, and a rush of words flow out. “For _anyone_ who receives this Patronus! Death Eaters are in Diagon Alley, and this time it isn’t a drop-in assassination. They’re making a go of carving a path through Knockturn into the Alley proper!”

“That would be both of us, I think.” Salazar stands up, swearing under his breath. Not even twenty-four hours, and he must rush back because of number of fools in black cloaks and skeletal masks think themselves brave to attack shop keepers!

“Change your face, Sal,” Monty reminds him, and then Disapparates in order to assist in fending off Death Eaters.

Salazar retrieves a phial of Multa Facies Sucus from his inner jacket pocket, and then glances at the others. “No stupid risks,” he says.

“Monty just took all of them for us,” Elizabetha replies, sighing. “Go, Sal. You have our love.”

Salazar’s throat is too tight again. Please let this not be the final time he sees them. Please.

“And you have mine.”

* * * *

Salazar can’t sleep the day before Hallowe’en. He certainly does not sleep on the day itself. As is traditional, Voldemort calls all of his Death Eaters together on his favorite day of destruction. Celebration of their impending success always comes first.

For Hallowe’en 1979, Salazar is using the borrowed visage of Reyner Umbridge within the vast bounds of Selwyn House. The Malfoys, Carrows, Rothschilds, Rowles, Averys, and Rosiers battled fiercely and politely for the right to host Voldemort on this day, but the Selwyns came out as this year’s winner.

Reyner Umbridge is a minor Death Eater, one who is so easily overlooked that half of those present do not even know his name. In Pure-blood terms, he didn’t marry well, either, though Salazar always thought Catherine Farley to be a pleasant woman during her life, if a bit dim. Her daughter, the Slytherin-graduated Dolores, is not among the Death Eaters because she is busy climbing the Ministry ladder of power and prestige with teeth, claws, and viciously innocent smiles. Reyner himself would be cast out of these circles as a hapless, useless Half-blood, but his grandmother was a Selwyn. Thus, he is always welcome within this house, free to go anywhere he pleases.

Umbridge has never once remained sober for a Death Eater affair, but he is often called upon for acts of violence. The Underground only uses Polyjuice to act as the man on rare occasions, especially after Richard impersonated Umbridge and was swept up in a battle that forced him to face off against the Order of the Phoenix. He got out of that mess alive and without harming anyone, but the scent of scorched hair and fabric lingered long after his burns were healed.

Salazar’s impersonation of Umbridge for Hallowe’en is being done in hope that Reyner Umbridge will be chosen by Voldemort to accompany him for the Hallowe’en _festivities_. Whether Voldemort goes to the Potters or not, such might still grant Salazar the opportunity to discover who the absolute fucking hell is murdering innocents in order to destroy ancient family wards.

That doesn’t make it any easier to get close to Voldemort, and Salazar _must_ know when and where Voldemort decides to enact his chosen slaughter tonight. Salazar forces himself to endure the company of mad Bellatrix Black, who is never far from her beloved Dark Lord’s side. Voldemort is not anywhere that Salazar can see, but this part of Selwyn House is a maze of rooms that could disguise the presence of an entire bloody army. Out of sight does not mean Bellatrix Black wandered too far.

Desdemona approaches Salazar after eight o’clock that evening. “Bellatrix, darling, how are you?”

Bellatrix Black giggles in her high-pitched, schoolgirl manner that never fails to be eerie and alarming. “I’m quite well, dear Desdemona. Reyner here was just being so very _entertaining_.”

Salazar adds a bit of a slur to his words. “Madam Black means to say that I was sharing gossip from the Ministry, lovingly provided by my own daughter.”

“The Ministry is nothing but entertaining fools wandering around in officious uniforms,” Desdemona says in a tone of amused agreement. “I do find myself wondering which Blood Traitors our Lord will choose to visit tonight. There are so many wonderful options, which might help to clear the drek from the Ministry.”

Bellatrix laughs outright, grating and terrible. “You know the Dark Lord will _never_ choose you to accompany us, Desdemona, darling. You’re not that good with a wand.”

Desdemona merely raises an eyebrow. She and Salazar are both aware that Desdemona is excellent with a wand, but it isn’t skill that precludes her. Excepting Bellatrix, Voldemort most often chooses only men to accompany him on his personal raids against Wizarding Britain. Only when it is the full might of his Inner Circles are women invited to participate in the carnage.

“That’s quite all right, Bellatrix. I know that you will represent us well.” Desdemona’s tone makes it clear that _us_ means _witches_.

Bellatrix smirks and blows a long strand of her wild black hair away from her eyes. “If only others would follow my humble example,” she coos, and wanders off.

“Damn,” Desdemona murmurs after casting a privacy charm. “I really hoped that sort of fishing expedition might yield something of use. I truly cannot stand that woman.”

“I was getting nothing, either. I’m beginning to suspect that Bellatrix Black is not going to be involved in tonight’s slaughter, or she would be boasting of her coming opportunity to kill Blood Traitors,” Salazar replies. “Why else would she willingly tolerate Reyner Umbridge’s company?”

“Spying on behalf of her Dark Lord, obviously,” Desdemona says. “Wait. The crowds around us…too many are gleeful.”

“The Dark Lord isn’t here. He’s gone, and we missed it. Fuck!” Salazar turns to escape into the nearest cupboard or toilet and then bends over, wheezing, as magic bloody well kicks him in the chest.

No. No, please. Not now.

“Sa—Reyner!” Desdemona corrects herself as the privacy charm drops. “What is wrong, you old fool?”

Salazar tries to answer and only succeeds in wheezing again. Now he can feel the warning in his blood, the sense of family in danger.

“Reyner Umbridge, have you been abusing substances from Knockturn again?” Desdemona asks crossly. The few Death Eaters who were wandering closer out of curiosity immediately lose interest. Overdoses, like alcoholism, are common occurrences whenever Death Eaters gather.

“Yes,” Salazar manages to gasp. Desdemona makes a tutting sound and then scornfully leads him to the nearest toilet, which is large enough to serve as a sleeping chamber.

Wards glimmer as they seal the door, then spread along the walls to ensure privacy. “It’s safe,” Desdemona tells him. “And well-timed, too, as the Polyjuice is starting to wear off. It’s the Potters, isn’t it?”

Salazar nods. “I have to—” _Go,_ he tries to say, and earns another painful kick for it. He has been warned; he is not to change history.

 _Fuck you,_ Salazar snarls back. Maybe he cannot change history, but he refuses to let them fight alone. “Make Umbridge’s excuses for me, please,” Salazar says, and then forces himself through the most difficult Apparition he may have ever performed.

He doesn’t make it onto the manor grounds. He crashes against an invisible magical barrier and is flung back, landing on the ground hard and losing all the air in his lungs.

Then there are hands on his arms, attempting to pull him upright. “You fared better than I did. That thing broke my fucking nose.”

Salazar blinks up at James Potter, noting the blood still smeared along his upper lip, and then manages to get to his feet with James’s help. He is no longer being kicked by warning magic, and he doesn’t think it’s because James has already lost his family.

They’re standing just beyond the edge of the village in Godric’s Hollow, the eastern side that is closer to the manor. Salazar can see distant torchlight, but nothing else. He feels bruised from head to toe.

“What the fuck?” Salazar finally asks.

“It’s a blood ward. It has to be,” James says, and places his hand on that invisible barrier. “I saw a couple of villagers walk right through it, talking about being on their way down to the river for a bit of night fishing.”

“A blood ward—gods dammit, Henry!” Salazar yells. “When I said to use blood on your home’s founding stone to strengthen your fucking wards, this isn’t what I had in mind!”

James looks at him, an expression of horrible, unwanted understanding on his face. “Granddad wants us safe,” he whispers. “He knew we’d feel that warning, and Apparate right into the midst of You-Know-Who and a bunch of fucking Death Eaters. I sent a Patronus to Sirius, then more to Remus, Peter, and Lily, but I think another battle must be happening somewhere else. No one has sent anything back, and they wouldn’t just ignore me.”

“No. They would never do such a thing.” Not even Pettigrew has changed his ratty spots.

 _Henry has been preparing for this since James, Lily, and Sirius were married,_ Salazar thinks, his heart beating too fast in his chest. _They all have._ “Henry and your father both—they said I was to safeguard you and your spouses first. Then—then it would be your parents. Your grandparents after.”

James looks up as the ward develops a visible, saffron gold crack that is surrounded by deep forest green. “But they already knew it wouldn’t—” He breaks off and lifts his arm, removing tears and blood from his face with his robe sleeve. “When this goes down, I’m going in. Maybe I can’t save them, but I can’t just let that fucker _do this_.”

Salazar raises both eyebrows. “That is rather the opposite of my keeping you safe.”

James’s hand tightens on his wand, mahogany carved with spider-web patterns that Salazar thinks doesn’t suit him at all. The crack in the blood ward is getting larger, joined by other fracture lines. “I don’t care.”

“I do, you idiot,” Salazar snaps at him. “Listen to me. If you follow me into this, you cannot let yourself be distracted by _anything_ you see. Not a body, not a burning house. Nothing. Your focus is for Death Eaters, and for You-Know-Fucking-Who. Can you do that?”

James scowls. “I’m not a kid anymore, Saul. I’m an Auror, and I’ve been dealing with these arseholes for a while now.”

Salazar uses Mind Magic to set aside sharp grief when the cracks become a multitude. The wards will shatter when the caster breathes their last, and this was a magical crafting that Henry and Elizabetha made together. “Not Saul. Sal.”

“What’s the difference?”

Salazar retrieves his wand and runs his thumb down the carved length of cherrywood runes. “I’ll tell you after your son is born.”

James’s attention is finally diverted from unthinking wrath. “Lily’s _pregnant?_ ”

“Not yet,” Salazar says. “Your grandmother believed it would be next month, and most assuredly yours. So you’d best survive this to make certain such comes to be!”

James licks dry lips and nods. “Okay. Yeah. Plan?”

“I lead; you follow. We run there from here; we do not Apparate into the unknown. Kill them before they can kill you. If anyone casts the Killing Curse at you, get out of the fucking way. Try to avoid taunting You-Know-Who if he is still present. Once the Death Eaters are dead or gone, we worry about saving the house.”

James looks shocked. “But, my parents, my family—”

“James.” Salazar closes his eyes, briefly, and then gives James a hard stare. “You know what the death of this blood ward means.”

“Oh, God.” James draws in a sharp breath. “Yeah. I know.”

A long python Patronus crawls up to them before the ward fails entirely. “There is a _load_ of shite happening on the Scottish-English border! Middle of fuckin’ nowhere, just east of the boundary for Northumberland National Park. You won’t miss it!”

Salazar casts his Patronus in response before he thinks on it, and ignores James’s gasp of shock. “Hallowe’en slaughter in Somerset.” Then he sends the Gorgon Patronus off, as that is all Bailey will need to know. Salazar is most assuredly _not_ available.

“Bloody Gorgon,” James mutters. “No wonder Sirius was whinging about that when it turned up in the M.L.E. But—that first Patronus, and the voice. That message was meant for you, but I know both—”

“You do _not_ ,” Salazar snarls, and their path is suddenly clear. “You put that entirely out of your head, and don’t think on it again!”

James doesn’t answer, but his attention is now occupied by following Salazar. Unless James is an unspoken tetrachromat, Salazar is the one who can best see where they’re going, keeping to the faint hint of a path that winds through the trees between the village and Potter Manor. Blues, violets, and silvery white light—and orange. Fire.

Salazar doesn’t hesitate, lifting his wand and killing the first Death Eater in range. None were among Voldemort’s lot tonight but for himself and Desdemona. There is no risk to anyone in the Underground. He only has to dispatch twelve more Death Eaters and keep James Potter alive.

Voldemort has already departed. Thank the gods.

To his credit, James is not hesitating to use the Killing Curse. He is a young Auror who knows he stands among the bodies of family. Grief and anger are fueling his curses, so strong they fling back whoever they strike.

The manor is on fire, but the flames seem reluctant to do damage. Salazar chases several foolish Death Eaters inside and kills the first of them in the foyer. The second dies in Henry’s office, where the tall windows have been blown in and the fireplace is half-destroyed.

Salazar knocks down the third and drags them out of the solarium while the Death Eater struggles and screams about the Devil’s Snare winding its way around his body. “You will not desecrate this house,” he hisses, only then realizing that he is weeping. “Not ever again.”

Outside, James is looking around at the fallen Death Eaters, the bodies of his distant Potter cousins among them. Then he screams, a howl of grief so vast that it reaches the stars.

* * * *

“Good God.” Rufus leans on his cane, looking weary beyond belief. Salazar feels much the same. “I bloody well hate this. We couldn’t afford to lose Harry, Saul. Hell, we couldn’t afford to lose any of them.”

Salazar keeps his eyes away from the M.L.E. members who are taking out a body on a stretcher, mercifully covered by a plain white sheet. No one has granted any Death Eater that same courtesy, which led to some rather interesting post-mortem realizations on the M.L.E.’s part as they discovered previously unknown Death Eaters. “You know Henry has said since 1971 that he would not hide, and he would not run.”

“Aye.” Rufus sighs and glances at the open door for Henry’s office. Except for many broken windows and the fireplaces downstairs, there is minimal damage to the manor. There were already fire-proofing spells built into the walls that kept the intent of Death Eater destruction from having its way, ones that had seen recent rejuvenation. The manor’s outer walls are blackened by smoke and flame, the season’s dead grass burnt to ash, but nothing further. “Both fireplaces on the main floor were connected to the Floo network, and both look to have been taken out right at the start,” Rufus says.

“Henry made Port Keys.” Salazar thinks on how little time passed between the warning magic and the collapse of the blood ward. “If they weren’t being carried, there was no time to use them.”

“Should’ve been carrying the things.” Rufus growls under his breath. “No, I can’t do that. I’m angry, but not at them. I’ll not think ill of the dead. Not unless they’re wearing a Goddamn Death Eater cloak. How’s the boy?”

“What do you think?” Salazar asks.

Rufus grimaces. “That’s not the right sort of question, then. He did well, I’ll say that. You said there were twelve Death Eaters here at the start, three of them close to You-Know-Who, and here we’re making off with twelve Death Eater corpses.”

Salazar eyes Rufus and thinks Aubrey might be ready for sainthood for not strangling her brother. The war has caused what little tact and diplomacy Rufus had to dissipate into vapor. “I’m certain such praise will make up for the loss of his entire family.” He leaves Rufus to direct the rest of this fucking disaster by himself.

The manor stairs are undamaged, though Salazar has to grit his teeth and step past the first two. The body is gone; the memory remains. When he is halfway up to the first storey, he sits down next to James.

“I can’t find—I can’t find Nerys,” James whispers.

“She was a bonded familiar to your mother. They tend to…” Salazar has to pause and collect himself. “They most often choose to leave and seek their own end if that connection is broken. I’m sorry.”

James shakes his head. “No—no, that…Nerys would be miserable, trying to stay with me.”

Salazar nods. The owl might try, if she were to encounter James, but it would not be enough to sustain her. “Is there word?”

James nods, fiddling with his wand with both hands. “Yeah. Seems like the fight on the border was really that bad. Lily and Sirius both offered to come here, but I told them—I told them I wasn’t alone, and that there isn’t anything else to do. Not right now. There are still people up in Northumberland who need their wands, but they’ll be home—they’ll be home soon.” He looks up from his unblinking study of the carpet runner on the stairs. “You don’t have the Death Fidelius, do you?”

Salazar shakes his head. “I’d have thought it would have been given to you.”

“No. Not—maybe they thought I’d worry more, if I had that kind of a hint. As if I wouldn’t come straight here the moment I knew something was wrong, anyway,” James says bitterly. “It’s probably in the family vault. I hope it is. If it’s not—”

“Then the moment we step out of this house, it’s gone.” Salazar rubs at his eyes, feeling exhaustion and grief pressing in. “I’ll help you, at least until your spouses arrive. Once they’re here, I must go. It is still no time for them to know of someone like me.” It is still danger enough that James is aware, but James Potter was taught Mind Magic by Monty, who learned dirty tricks from Nizar’s portrait, and by Elizabetha, whose Eastern thoughts on shielding often leave western wizards too baffled to pry further.

James blinks at him in confusion. “Help me to what?”

“I always tell others to take no chances. If the phrase to unlock the Death Fidelius is not in a vault, there will be no opportunity to come back.”

“Oh. Right.” James wipes at his eyes and then takes a shuddering breath. “If there is anything I want from here, I should take it now.”

“Yes.” Salazar hesitates. There is so much he could say, and all of it meaningless. “James. I am so very sorry.”

The dam breaks for the second time. Salazar wraps his arms around James when the young man clings to him, sobbing out the sort of heartbreak that time never seems to mend.

* * * *

Salazar doesn’t listen to the tapes Henry entrusted him with. He didn’t even listen to the Micromite when he discovered it in Henry’s desk, half of its microcassette used for a recording. When he delivers them in 1981, and James Potter listens to them all for the first time, that is when Salazar will hear them, as well.

There was no paper with a written phrase on it to unlock the manor’s Death Fidelius in the Potter vaults. Salazar stares at the place where he knows the manor to be, which now gives him a headache as the spell attempts to direct his attention elsewhere. Such a strange thing to overlook. It almost makes him want to hope—

No. He can’t. There is a vast difference between hope and delusion.

Salazar hides beneath his brother’s Invisibility Cloak to attend the funerals in Chiltern Hills, just as he had for Dorea and Charles. The weather is overcast, chill and foul; the front row of seats is occupied by James Potter, Sirius Black, and Lily Black Potter. Seated behind them are Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Andromeda and Ted Tonks with their squirrelly Metamorphmagus daughter, Frank and Alice Longbottom, and young Order member Emmaline Vance. Sirius Black and James are always distinctive by their matching heights and black hair, though James’s skin holds onto the pale bronze gifted to him by his grandmother. Lily Black Potter’s hair shines like a firebrand between them.

Elizabetha would be so amused by the notion of receiving a Protestant funeral. James wanted otherwise, but it had always been his grandmother to arrange such things. He had no idea where to begin, not when the funerals and burials had to be arranged with wartime haste.

When the traditional closing prayer is complete, the Christian priest crumbles a handful of earth with his final words. James lets out another sharp wail of denial and grief. It’s as if that moment again made it real; as if that is the moment James Henry Potter first realizes he has just inherited, among other things, an Invisibility Cloak that will never age.

Salazar chooses that moment to depart. It will be a long day of grief for the family, and he has no wish to intrude any more than he already has.

He doesn’t dare to visit and see what was done within the Potter vault until mid-November. He thinks he might break down in the midst of Chiltern Hills, otherwise. Their wills and burial wishes were up to date and verified by both the Ministry and the goblins. Salazar wants—needs—to see that their requests were granted.

Olivia Potter Sinistra has been buried next to her husband and child. She was eighty-nine years old, and the M.L.E. forensics report stated that she fought like a young and victorious Viking until she was finally felled. Walter Potter was placed next to his lost wife Judith, a first cousin of both Muriel Prewett and the two surviving Dumbledore brothers. Gilbert Potter was laid to rest next to his twin. They were eighty years old; when Death Eaters overtook them, they fell together.

Elizabetha has a stone marker to match the rest, but there is no casket or urn sealed behind it. James was at least able to have her body cremated, her ashes released upon the southwestern coast and its angry autumn ocean. The passage on her stone is from Kalidasa’s writing, carved in Sanskrit.

_Elizabetha Esha Fleamont_

_A Jat of Lohat from Birth until Death,_

_Whereupon the Wheel Turns Again_

_Born in London, England_

_16 th April 1899_

_Died in Godric’s Hollow, England_

_31 st October 1979_

_Age 79_

_“For yesterday is only a dream,  
and tomorrow is but a vision.  
But today, well lived,  
makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,  
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.”_

Henry chose a Biblical verse as his tombstone’s inscription, which is not much of a surprise. Neither he nor Elizabetha tried to change each other’s faiths, but still he decided upon something complimentary.

_Henry “Harry” Simon Potter_

_Born and Died in Godric’s Hollow, England_

_Upstanding Wizard of the Wizengamot_

_Hero of the European Wizarding War_

_Born 29 th June 1892_

_Died 31 st October 1979_

_Age 87_

_John 14:27_ _  
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you._

_Not as the world gives do I give to you._

_Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”_

Monty’s preferred name is missing from his grave marker, which he would despise. Salazar glances around and fixes that ridiculous lack. Aside from that, Monty once again proves with the inscription on his stone that he was cut from a slightly different sort of Potter cloth than his father.

_Fleamont “Monty” Lohat Potter_

_Born and Died in Godric’s Hollow, England_

_Stood Firm Against the Tide_

_In this British Wizarding War_

_Born 3 rd June 1929_

_Died 31 st October 1979_

_Age 50_

_“Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’_

_We are not now that strength which in old days_

_Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;_

_One equal temper of heroic hearts,_

_Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will_

_To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”_ [1]

Euphemia’s stone and its inscription brings tears to his eyes. She was often quiet, but beneath that quiet pool lurked vast, unfathomable wells of strength.

_Euphemia Grace Pryce Potter_

_Born in Cardiff, Wales_

_4 th September 1924_

_Died in Godric’s Hollow, England_

_31 st October 1979_

_Age 55_

“ _And out again I curve and flow_

_To join the brimming river,_

_For men may come and men may go,_

_But I go on forever._ ”[2]

“That does explain why both yours and Monty’s markers quote Tennyson,” Salazar says to the cold stone. “You did not choose those lines for the pair of you, but for the ones who would be left behind.”

Henry and Elizabetha left behind messages of faith for a grandson who practices blended Christianity and Hinduism. Euphemia and Monty left their son and his spouses a reminder of what this sort of sacrifice is made for.

“Gods, but I already miss you all so much,” Salazar whispers. “There were so many things I wanted to say, but I wasn’t ready to speak the words. I’m not certain I ever would have been, but I know I am being heard now. Perhaps that will be enough.

“I’d forgotten one of Godric’s instructions. He always remembered that there was more to life than duty. He craved everything there is that a lifetime can offer, and always shared this love with others.

“I dwelled in England for three hundred years, but I didn’t live here. I’d again fallen into the terrible habit of acting the part of a walking dead man until I met a man named Henry Simon Potter in Nuremberg, timed so well as to be in the midst of a bombing raid.

“Thank you for claiming me, for everything you did that dragged me along through those terrible years after the last wars…and this one, also. You reminded me that I do not merely exist. Thank you for helping me remember to live.”

[1] “Ulysses” by Alfred Tennyson

[2] “The Brook” by Alfred Tennyson


	25. R.A.B.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life as a Death Eater was not designed to make anyone happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit as usual to lovely (flailing) @norcumii, who has done a lot of pointing and screeching the last week regarding later chapters, and I'm not sorry. *g*
> 
> Even if I don't often have the spoons to respond to all the lovely feedback, I appreciate all of you. <3 (Also, it's writer fuel.)

It’s first November, probably nearing dawn. Death Eaters are celebrating the results of their battle in Northumbria…and they are celebrating the slaughter of the Potter family.

None of them mean it, Severus thinks bitterly. None of them give a damn about Blood Purity, or about protecting magical blood, or they wouldn’t be celebrating. They would mourn the fact that, unless James Potter has children (terrifying thought), another Pure-blooded lineage was just wiped out.

Max. Westenberg. Burke. Longbottom. Grace. Flint. Prince. Moody. Figg. Crouch. Bones. Now, Potter is added to the list of families that are either extinct, like the Graces and the Westenbergs, or down to one or two people remaining out of what had once been many.

If Voldemort had ever been serious about protecting magical blood, the label of Blood Traitor wouldn’t matter. Potter might not survive this fucking war long enough to keep his family name alive, and Lily—

Oh, God. Lily. If she wouldn’t forgive him before, when it was just about a single word, then she’ll never forgive any of this.

“You’d think they would recall that the Potter Manor attack resulted in the death of twelve of our number,” Severus says in a dry voice.

Beside him, Regulus Black has been a silent shadow. “I don’t believe they care. The Hopkins family, at least, isn’t crass enough to celebrate Glorianna Hopkirk’s death.” He sighs. “I’m off for a drink. Would you like anything?”

“No. Thank you.” Severus watches Regulus depart, uncertain if he should be concerned. Regulus has grown quieter as autumn has progressed. He does everything asked of him, but Regulus seems…listless. Unhappy.

Life as a Death Eater was not designed to make anyone happy. Not unless they also happen to be an idiot.

“You seem distressed, Severus. Is this a concern similar to that of last summer?”

Severus has long since grown used to Voldemort trying to terrify the life out of him by way of suddenly appearing out of nowhere to stand at his side. His pulse picks up a bit in response, but otherwise, it isn’t startling anymore. In truth, it’s _annoying_. “No, my Lord. It isn’t.”

“You were right when you spoke of their rallying around Bagnold’s resignation. I should have given your words more weight at the time, my friend,” Voldemort says. “I’d hoped the battle in Northumberland would gain us more dead, foolish Phoenixes. I would not call the battle a victory for them, but it isn’t the victory I’d hoped we would attain, either.”

Two compliments in a row from Voldemort. Severus has only ever heard Regulus and Bellatrix earn similar. “You wish for my opinion now, my Lord? I warn you it might not be popular.”

Voldemort seems amused by that. “Useful opinions often are unpopular ones, else I would have succeeded in my goals long ago. Speak, please. I would hear this unpopular opinion, Severus.”

Severus checks his Occlumency shields. The layers he crafted stand ready to be peeled back to reveal false thoughts and beliefs, something Voldemort has done to him at least twice before and gone off satisfied that he saw all that was necessary. He tucks certain truths even further away from those layers, and then turns to face the Dark Lord.

Voldemort has not been aging well, and it isn’t a pleasant sight. His eyes are still their famous jewel-toned blue, and they shine vibrantly against his pale skin—too pale, like a gaunt corpse. The bones of his face are sharply defined, and his hands resemble long-fingered claws. Voldemort’s black hair was still thick with vitality when Severus accepted the Dark Mark in January 1977. It’s now dull, hanging more like a combed collection of dead weeds.

“I do not question my Lord’s need to…make an example of others,” Severus says carefully. If he gets this wrong, he’ll be lucky if torture is all he endures. “But I joined my Lord’s ranks because of your oft-spoken desire to separate the magical from the mundane. To protect magical blood, and to preserve it in Wizarding Britain from those who would endanger it. Unless the two surviving Bones siblings, the surviving Longbottom men, Barty Crouch Junior, and James Potter decide to breed—something I doubt any of them will survive long enough to do—then those are two important bloodlines and two ancient and noble magical houses lost to us. Powerful magical blood’s lack will give many of my Lord’s followers fewer choices on whom they would consider suitable for marriage.”

“Are you worried about your own marriage prospects, Severus?”

Severus knows he isn’t mistaking that cruel gleam in Voldemort’s eyes. He learned it at his father’s knee. “No, my Lord. I am uninterested in feminine wiles.” At least the Dark Lord isn’t homophobic, but it’s only because Voldemort does not care about those matters in the slightest. “But when the others’ delight in victory wears thin, they’ll realize that the means of keeping our bloodlines alive are thinning. My mother’s bloodline is dead. I would hate to see others who would be loyal to my Lord’s cause succumb to similar fates.”

Voldemort claps his hand down on Severus’s shoulder. Severus doesn’t flinch, even though it was a slap heavy enough to hurt and bruise. “You are a survivor, my friend, with a survivor’s view of the world. I think similarly, though I confess I think more often of myself than of our people as a whole. It would be useful to have a reminder standing in my Innermost Circle, one who is unafraid to remind me that there is always a price paid for spilt blood.”

Severus’s eyes widen. “The Innermost Circle? But my Lord, I’ve done nothing to earn—”

“You’ve done much to earn it, yet you are one of the few who has not come whining to me like a tiny insect, begging for my favor and wondering why I haven’t granted what you so obviously deserve.” Voldemort smiles, thin-lipped and cold even while doling out the highest praise a Death Eater can expect to receive. “I should have done this a long time ago. Join those of the Innermost Circle, Severus. You have earned the privilege.”

 _Fab,_ Severus thinks in hidden dismay. He gets to be in close company with not only Voldemort, but the bloody Lestrange brothers and Bellatrix Black.

Severus isn’t stupid. Voldemort is not doing this on a whim of sudden recognition of Severus’s skill. He lost three members of the Innermost Circle to the raid against the Potters, and now Voldemort is choosing who will replace them.

The irony is not lost on him, either. In 1977, Severus would have killed for this opportunity. Now, he despises it…but he is a Slytherin. He has already survived the unimaginable while fighting in this war. He will survive this, as well.

Narcissa approaches him the next day, after the information spreads of Severus’s new status. “Congratulations,” she murmurs. “How do you find it?”

“I loathe your sister.”

Narcissa makes a faint sound of amused agreement. “Bellatrix has always been intolerable. Now, we simply must do something about your wardrobe.”

Severus almost takes a step back in alarm. “My wardrobe is fine.” He does not need to be indebted to the Malfoys. He may be already, though neither Lucius or Narcissa act as if they have any concerns. Still, there is no need to make it worse.

“Your wardrobe was fine before, but now you are now a part of the Dark Lord’s Innermost Circle.” Narcissa gives Severus an appraising look. “Consider it a trade.”

“A trade? How?” Severus asks.

Narcissa steps closer, her voice almost inaudible. “Privacy, please.” After Severus obligingly casts the spell, Narcissa speaks again. “I will purchase the entirety of a wardrobe that suits a man of your status, and call it a debt paid, if the most brilliant brewer on this isle will help me to ensure that I can maintain this pregnancy and bear a child without difficulty next summer.”

“You’re pregnant.” Severus thinks on how much Narcissa desperately wants a child, and not for Lucius Malfoy’s sake. “That is an uneven payment. Perhaps you should also owe me a favor after the child’s birth.”

Narcissa smiles again, her lips turning up on the left side. “Not a desperate man, but an intelligent Slytherin. It would be a minor favor, and only if my child is born healthy.”

Severus decides that is reasonable enough. “Then we have a fair trade. We should go somewhere private to discuss your health, along with so many other details we have never wanted to know about each other.”

Narcissa nods. “I will introduce you to my chosen midwife. She is exceptionally discreet, as I trust you to be. She will be able to handle the aspects of my pregnancy that you cannot.”

“And we can confer as to your needs. Excellent.” Severus offers Narcissa his arm. “I suspect you’re ready to sit down with this midwife and myself, or you would not have approached me this morning.”

“The baby is likely due in June. Yes, immediately is to my preference,” Narcissa agrees, laying her hand on his crooked arm.

Narcissa’s discreet midwife is Jewel Talbot Burke, mother of Octavian. Severus nearly pales before recovering himself. “Madam Burke, a pleasure,” he introduces himself properly, as a Pure-blood would, and Madam Burke’s blue eyes shine with approval. There is silver in her brown hair and lines on her face that had not been present before Octavian Burke’s death, but she remains a stately, handsome woman. “I didn’t realize you were trained as a midwife.”

“I had the time to learn whatever I desired before I was blessed with my son. It will be pleasing to work with someone who is as talented with potions as you are said to be,” Madam Burke replies.

Severus straightens up. “It isn’t a mere claim, else Narcissa would never have asked for my assistance.” He studies her posture, expression, and Madam Burke’s firm Occlumency shielding. “If I have never done so before, I offer my sympathies regarding Octavian’s loss.”

“You had not, but I understand why. I am not the most approachable of women.” Madam Burke lifts her chin. “Now, let us all sit down. If a Black woman is to safely carry and birth an infant, we must be cautious and precise. Narcissa tells me she is approximately seven weeks pregnant, so we are still in the dangerous realm of spontaneous rejection of the fetus. Other dangers will be discussed as appropriate, but for now…”

“No more Death Eater raids, Narcissa,” Severus says flatly. He’d rather this not be a more difficult task than it already is.

Madam Burke nods. “Exactly.”

* * * *

“That man and his blasted Occlumency!” Jewel seethes, stalking back and forth in the living room of the Willow House.

Salazar shakes his head. “Severus Snape again, I take it?”

“Yes! He’s _impossible_.” Jewel abruptly turns around and glares at him. “Have you attempted to make your way past Severus’s Occlumency shields?”

“I’ve never had the chance, no,” Salazar replies. “But every other member of the Underground reports as you do—that he is very, _very_ good.”

“ _So, still no confirmation on whether it’s spying now, or spying later,_ ” Nizar’s portrait comments, accompanied by sign language.

“No,” Jewel answers, proving that her proficiency is in British sign language is increasing. She sits down, a frown marring her pristine grooming. “I will say this: I do not believe Severus Snape is pleased with his position.”

“As a Death Eater, or as a new member of You-Know-Who’s Inner Circle?” Salazar asks.

“Innermost,” Jewel corrects, her frown deepening. “Not the third or second ring. The circle of those who stand closest to You-Know-Who, those he considers to be the most vital to his cause. I believe the Dark Lord is not only impressed with Severus’s skills in brewing and his silver tongue, but is…fond of him. Or as fond of anyone as the Dark Lord is capable of being.”

“ _That’s fucking creepy_ ,” Nizar hisses.

“Indeed it is.” Salazar leans back in his chair, thinking over the shifting politics within Voldemort’s hated Court. The twelve Death Eaters who’d been foolish enough to remain behind at Potter Manor after Voldemort’s departure had included Innermost Circle members Modestus Rowle, Redgrave Hooper Junior, & Alexander Rosier. Severus Snape is likely meant to be Hooper’s replacement, as that family has now seen two losses from Voldemort’s Circles, and thus lost significant influence. Theodore Nott was chosen to replace Modestus Rowle, a quiet signal that the Nott family is now being held in more esteem than the Rowles, especially given how many other Rowles there are to choose from. Cornelius Yaxley replaced Alexander Rosier, a sign of the Yaxley family’s rising value in Voldemort’s eyes. Leonidas Warrington was arrested by the M.L.E., convinced no one of his innocence, and is now in Azkaban. Such gave Lucius Malfoy what he has been aiming for all along—a place in the Innermost Circle, ranked above even his own father. Aside from those three fools, Severus Snape is now in the company of Bellatrix Black, Rodolphus Lestrange, Obsidian Rothschild, William Montague, John Avery Senior, Allenford Selwyn, Dorcus Carrow, and Gamelinus Rowle. None of them make for stellar companionship.

“The Winter Solstice is approaching,” Salazar finally says. “Mayhap I’ll have my own chance to finally attempt the man’s Occlumency shields. Your opinion of Severus Snape otherwise?”

“He has the mannerisms of a Pure-blood. Better manners than many of them, in fact,” Jewel replies. “Severus also has a silver tongue that could cut glass at thirty paces. He _is_ as skilled at Potions as Narcissa Malfoy claimed, which was not a surprise, as that is an opinion the Dark Lord shares.”

“ _Huh. I only ever knew him to be scowling or screaming_ ,” Nizar’s portrait says.

Jewel’s lips twitch after Salazar translates, a necessity when she can’t see the painting. “I feel like doing much the same of late.”

“PTSD has done none of us any favors,” Salazar agrees. He has been much twitchier since the last day of October, and it isn’t helping that he is avoiding sleep. If he sleeps, he dreams, and what awaits him are the slack visages of the recent dead. Twitchy is far better than disastrously broken.

“I believe that Severus might be the closest Narcissa will ever get to considering someone a friend, as I think the true capacity is beyond her—and I speak as someone who recognizes that Narcissa and I are quite alike,” Jewel says. “Narcissa has made it clear that her priority is her pregnancy, and given Lucius Malfoy’s new place in the Innermost Circle, the Dark Lord is indulging her, as well as her rather constant _borrowing_ of Severus.”

Salazar glances at her in surprise. “Narcissa Malfoy is that concerned for this pregnancy?”

“Narcissa has been trying for a child since the first day of her marriage. She is a Black from a rotten branch of the Black family tree and knows it, one who married another Pure-blood. The Malfoys and the Blacks might not have had a marriage alliance in several generations, but better her strong desire for precaution than flagrant disregard.”

* * * *

Augustine Travers is, by all other accounts, a decent person. He loves his wife Annette, gifting her with all manner of things a rich, Pure-blooded wizard could think of to offer a witch. He adores his children, Hogwarts-attending Justin and infant Eloise. He drank too much until his daughter was born in June 1979, but then willingly put aside such bad habits. He had, apparently, done the same until Justin was old enough to attend school.

If it hadn’t been for Augustine Travers’s penchant for spouting Blood Purity nonsense, and for deciding it a brilliant lark to follow Voldemort and bear his Mark, he would be the sort of man that Salazar might have liked to share company with. Some days, the stupidity of others still manages to astound him, and he’s had one thousand years to become accustomed to it.

Annette Arsenau Travers proved herself to be far more sensible than her husband, and chose to work for the Underground when it was judged safe enough to approach her. Annette considers Voldemort to be foul, a danger to her family, but tolerated her husband’s desire to spend time among other Pure-bloods. Augustine Travers hid the Dark Mark and the full extent of his Death Eater activities from his wife for years, but the moment Annette discovered her husband had the Mark, she divorced him in a whirlwind of anger and paperwork. The ink was not yet dry on the Ministry seal that declared the act official before Annette and baby Eloise rejoined her family in Amiens. Salazar thinks she would have taken Justin Travers with her, also, but as a fifth-year away at school, her son is currently safe from his father’s idiocy.

Augustine Travers, baffled by Annette’s leaving—and heartbroken at losing both his wife and infant daughter in one fell swoop—resumed drinking. Heavily.

Salazar is not one to pass up such a perfect opportunity. He is of similar build and height to Augustine Travers, which makes the use of Multi Facies Sucus less distressing. Being able to again resort to his Death Eater of choice to impersonate requires nothing more than the man’s usual amount of drink, a bit of _Aturdir_ , and strands of easily stolen hair.

None who witness Augustine Travers’s drinking during Death Eater gatherings are surprised when the man’s recollection of a night’s events is faulty, not even Voldemort himself. Of course, Voldemort’s patience with this particular Death Eater’s overindulgence is tied directly to the still-extensive Travers family fortune.

All Death Eaters are ordered to attend Voldemort’s Court on all of the traditional holidays, even though Voldemort doesn’t give a rat’s bare arse about any of them. He does so for the sake of appearances, to pacify Death Eaters who predominantly label themselves as Christian, though none of them know how to act as one beyond trite observances. Any witch or wizard with half a brain cell, however, knows to pay close attention to certain dates that magic won’t let them forget: the Solstices, the Equinoxes, Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain, though most of that lot call it Hallowe’en.

In December 1979, the sprawling Rothschild Estate is chosen to host the Winter Solstice gathering. Augustine Travers wanders among his fellow Death Eaters with a glass of excellent champagne in his hand, exchanging polite, slurred words and greetings with Pure-bloods who have never once suspected Salazar to be anything other than what he appears—a loyal Death Eater who is drowning his sorrows, and possibly also his liver.

Anyone can count backwards by forty weeks. Lily Black Potter is by now two months pregnant, unless Salazar’s little brother began his erratic schedule with his own birth and waited until the final week of November to provide the first hint of his existence.

No. Don’t dwell. Don’t think on it. That way lies madness, or at least the heavy drinking that Salazar mimes Augustine Travers as indulging in.

Salazar casts his gaze around the massive ballroom, his ears focused on the words spoken aloud, but his mind is ready to catch the thoughts others might accidentally reveal with their eyes.

_Such a wonderful gathering, so full of friendly faces of people who are pretentiously ludicrous murderers, I’ve made a terrible blunder and I’m going to die for it—_

Salazar immediately returns his attention to Regulus Arcturus Black II, hiding his surprise with a drunken moment of unsteady feet. He never expected to pick up the thoughts of a man from the Ancient and Noble House of Black, especially not one trained by Walburga, Orion, Cassiopeia, and Pollux Black.

Regulus Black’s mental shielding is now just as ironclad as Salazar would otherwise discover. The expression on his face is the bland precision of a Pure-blood’s implied boredom, but there was no mistaking that thought. The young man turned eighteen just two months previous, and his distress must be intense for his Occlumency to have slipped so badly.

Salazar continues to study Regulus Black while listening as newlywed Mirabelle Crabbe Hopkins gushes like a broken pipe in regards to the loveliness of her honeymoon in Rome. He hopes that Edward Hopkins knew in advance of his marriage that his wife is not only free with her words, she tends to repeat every other sentence until her magnificent nuggets of nonsense have been properly acknowledged.

Regulus Black is not aware, but Salazar first saw him when a small, black-haired boy boarded the train to Hogwarts in 1962 for his first year of schooling. They met again on Christmas Day in 1977. Regulus Black was then sixteen years old, attending one of Voldemort’s Death Eater-hosted galas as an invited guest in the company of his parents, aunt, and uncle. None of the older Blacks are willing to be Marked, even though they support Voldemort. Regulus Black did not share in their reluctance.

Walburga Black hadn’t looked well for a witch who was a mere fifty-two years of age. Salazar had truly expected her to die first, not Orion Black.

Salazar had, of course, kept to character for portraying Evan Rosier Junior, and sneered at the sight of the unMarked Black family. The sneer would later dissolve into a restrained sigh as an idiot named Regulus Black pledged himself to Voldemort before he was even of age to bear the fucking Dark Mark. The young man swore he would join the Dark Lord when his studies at Hogwarts were completed after his seventeenth birthday.

“You do not graduate until summer 1980,” Pollux had reminded Regulus Black with an angry snap. If he’d hoped to keep his nephew from making an error, he chose the wrong tactic. Regulus Black insisted he would do exactly as he said, and that his arrival in the Dark Lord’s Court would be summer 1979, not 1980. That intrigued Voldemort enough that he laid a hand on Regulus Black’s shoulder, announcing he looked forward to that day’s swift arrival. Regulus Black preened under the attention, too blinded by Blood Purity dogma and Pure-blood idiocy to realize he was being gripped by a viper waiting to strike.

Regulus Black did exactly as he vowed. In his sixth year of Hogwarts, he remained Seeker of Slytherin’s Quidditch team while taking on its captaincy. He was welcomed into Horace Slughorn’s self-named club of self-importance. He chose History of Magic, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy, Potions, Arithmancy, Magical Art, and Ancient Studies as his class subjects for the later N.E.W.T.s. At the end of his sixth year of Hogwarts, Regulus Black surprised the school by insisting on sitting his chosen N.E.W.T.s with the other seventh-years. He graduated with an O in every subject, and by first July, was standing before Voldemort, his left arm bared to accept the Dark Mark.

Voldemort Marked him, congratulated him on showing such initiative, drive, and intelligence, and rewarded Regulus Black’s efforts by granting him a place in the Third Circle, the outermost of the Dark Lord’s three Inner Circles. Several other Death Eaters were envious and angered, fool enough to whinge that they’d had to earn their places, and yet the young Black scion was gifted with his.

That was Regulus Black’s introduction to the Dark Lord’s favorite method of punishment: _Cruciatu_. Those who thought that intelligence and ambition were not proper ways of earning the Dark Lord’s favor learned quickly to keep such thoughts to themselves.

Since July, Regulus Black has proved himself quiet and respectful. His dress and grooming are always pristine, his words precise and well-chosen. He has a bit of a sharp tongue—not on par with Severus Snape, but few are—choosing to demonstrate its edge only when the Dark Lord is absent. Regulus Black does what is bid of him with a born aristocrat’s grace; he often reminds Salazar of Monica and Jewel Burke, as he was trained in his mannerisms by those closer in age to their generation rather than his own. What Salazar has also seen is that Regulus Black’s smiles have grown fainter as the months have passed. A frown can often be found in his eyes, a faint line between his brow.

Salazar places his empty champagne flute onto the tray borne by the nearest house-elf, who is clean and healthy, if not truly happy. The Rothschilds are not fool enough to mistreat the servants who prepare their meals, but grooming and meals is as far as their consideration extends. “Thank you, Mimsy.”

“Our Master’s guest is welcome,” Mimsy replies, blushing. Then she hurries off to serve the next group of Death Eaters, who will be far less appreciative of her efforts. The elves know every time someone arrives under the guise of Multa Facies Sucus, but as Salazar and his fellow spies always treat them well, they give the elves no reason to betray their identities. Malfoy Manor remains the only Death Eater gathering place off-limits to anyone in the Underground who requires a potion to disguise themselves.

Salazar tucks his hand into his robe pocket and Conjures a scrap of paper. He can’t exactly write a note in front of dozens of witnesses, but he long ago learned the skill of placing words on paper with magic and thought. The message will disappear just after it is read by its recipient, a trick of vital importance when a spy’s preference is that of survival.

“Regulus Black! I’ve not seen you in some months!” Salazar all but shouts in Augustine’s boisterous voice. The man is a bloody loud drunk, and he’s been seen with enough champagne at this point in the evening to act the part.

Regulus Black jolts in place, startled, before he offers a polite smile. “Lord Travers. I didn’t think you had reason to recall anything about me.” He doesn’t say that it has been perhaps two weeks, at most, since Augustine Travers would have had opportunity to see him. He already knows that arguing with a drunkard is a fruitless exercise.

“I never forget a face,” Salazar says with complete honesty. Not when he’s in the spying frame of mind, and he’s had quite a bit of practice this century. “I saw you drop something earlier, but I’d gone and forgotten it until now. You should take more care with your formulas, especially if you’re working runes for Imbolc!”

Regulus Black gives him a confused look, but automatically reaches out to take the paper he is offered, unfolding it to read what it says. Salazar resolves that if this goes well, he is going to convince the young idiot that it’s foolish to blindly accept whatever you’re given. Contact poisons have existed for millennia.

_You are a Black, for gods’ sake. Act like it. If your shields had slipped like that in front of the Dark Lord, you would be dead already._

_If you truly wish for an alternative to your current situation, play along._

Regulus Black jerks his head back up to stare at Salazar. Then he masters his expression, a return to a Pure-blood’s implied boredom, and folds the paper. “Thank you for returning my property, Lord Travers. My family didn’t prefer my Arithmancy in regards to their ritual of choice this year, but perhaps another time…”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” Salazar allows, still booming out the words. “Now that I have your company, I would like to speak to you regarding a sensitive matter. You are aware, of course, that my son is fifteen.”

“Sixteen soon, is he not?” Black replies in a neutral voice. “In February, yes?”

“That he is, and right you are! Such a thing means it’s time for me to seek out suitable marriage arrangements for him!”

Regulus Black blanches, which is entertaining to witness. “I do hope the Lord Travers isn’t referring to me. I know that Justin’s tastes are for the masculine. I have nothing against the idea, but men are not to my preference, nor am I in any hurry to wed.”

Salazar wraps his arm around Regulus Black’s shoulders, ignoring how the young man stiffens in alarm. “No shame in that, none at all! But you’re still in contact, and in good favor, with many girls and boys of an age with my Justin. I demand you sit down with me in private so we can discuss your opinions on what Hogwarts’s next graduating classes have to offer. I can’t very well marry my own son off to a pair of brainless twits! The Travers succeed by intelligence and ingenuity. A mere breeder and pretty fluff will never do at all!”

Regulus Black winces several times throughout that recitation. Salazar isn’t certain if it’s due to his drunken volume, or by the implications scattered throughout that ridiculous speech, one that Augustine Travers has shared with at least seventeen other people thus far.

“I’m uncertain how I could be of assistance, but I don’t mind speaking in private.” Regulus Black hesitates, a faint smile on his face. “I believe one of the Peebles sisters might not be opposed to a triad marriage, but she would demand autonomy while Justin romanced their other spouse.”

“I knew you were the right man to ask!” Salazar declares, steering them towards the darkened veranda that circles the entire house. At one specific corner, there is a failure in the anti-Apparition wards which safeguard the Rothschild’s unnecessarily massive manor. “Come along, come along! You’ve mentioned a girl, but not a boy!”

“Oh, uh—I would have to think on that, to be honest. I wasn’t looking at boys as much as I was looking at the girls,” Regulus Black admits.

“A Slytherin like you? I highly doubt that.” Salazar flicks his fingers so that the listening charms floating around the ballroom scatter away and find others to follow. “Stay close,” he whispers. “We’re Apparating away from this place, for I truly meant for that chat to be private.”

“Your accent—your accent just changed,” Regulus Black stutters.

“For the better, I think.”

Regulus Black jerks free the moment their Apparition is done, turning around in the barren field before he faces Salazar again. “What in blazes is going on?” he demands to know.

It’s to be another cold and off-kilter winter in England this year. Salazar takes a brief moment to be grateful that it isn’t snowing. “I am not Augustine Travers, a fact I believe you intelligent enough to have discerned already.”

“No. No, he’s—you did an excellent job. It was that last part. I was starting to hope that perhaps Augustine Travers had seen sense, what with Lady Annette taking their baby off to France,” Regulus Black admits. He shivers when the wind strikes them, then retrieves his wand long enough to cast a Warming Charm. He glances at Salazar, pauses, and then puts his wand away. Salazar doesn’t need his wand any longer to cast such basic charms, and did so the moment they arrived. Besides, drawing his wand at this moment might startle Regulus into attempting to murder him, and it would be rather difficult to explain why he doesn’t die of it.

“Alas, I don’t think such will ever occur to him.” Salazar uses the chain of Augustine Travers’s pocket watch to pull it free from his robes, checking the time. “Might I have your assurance that you won’t hex me when the potion wears off?” He had only a few minutes left before ingesting another mouthful of that glop would have been necessary. Salazar is not normally particular in regards to Multa Facies Sucus, but something about Augustine Travers turns the potion chunky. It is _not_ pleasant, but sadly, he’s ingested worse things.

Regulus Black grants him a wary nod. “Who are you?”

“My name is Saul Luiz. You may or may not have heard of me, but that part is not important. What _is_ important is that I represent an organization known as the Underground.”

“The Underground.” Regulus Black frowns. “You’re not from Dumbledore’s ridiculous Order of the Phoenix?”

“Ridiculous is an accurate term, considering how much of our intelligence they ignore.” Salazar watches the seconds tick down before he puts the watch away. “I am a Slytherin, like yourself. I do not share in the Order’s prejudices regarding others of our House.”

Regulus Black’s eyes widen when the potion wears off. “You’re a bit shorter than I expected.”

“Oh, so we’re to begin with the insults?” Salazar grins, unoffended. “I chose Augustine Travers for a reason, and it is not only because he drinks himself stupid on the regular. I’m going to make you an offer. If you accept, your chances of surviving You-Know-Who’s Court will be much greater than before. If you refuse, I will ask that you swear on your magic never to reveal myself, or this conversation, to anyone else, whether they are living or dead.”

“You won’t Obliviate me?”

“Obliviation should be classed as an Unforgivable. I do not use it unless I’ve no choice in the matter,” Salazar replies.

“Fair enough.” Regulus Black’s still-hidden desperation makes itself obvious in that he is not angry, panicked, or threatening Salazar with his wand. “What do you propose?”

“The Underground works to undermine the Dark Lord. He is vileness personified, and while he has claim to the Slytherin Founder’s bloodline, he does not understand what it means to be a Slytherin in truth.”

“Yes, I—I realized that. Too late. Foolishly too late.” Regulus Black chews on his lower lip, demonstrating a remaining youthful mannerism. “What would you ask of me in regards to that goal?”

“I would have you spy among the Dark Lord’s Court on the Underground’s behalf, but you would not be left foundering, untrained and desperate. There are things to learn that will protect you. You are also a Black, the youngest son of Walburga and Orion, who were foolish enough to support the Dark Lord with money from their own vaults. If you remain steady, and learn your lessons well, there will never be a reason for the Dark Lord to suspect that your loyalty has changed.”

Regulus Black takes a breath and releases it, his fingers twitching as if he wants a wand in his hand. “You’re saying you would train me in spycraft and send me back among the lions, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. What is the point of it?”

“Aside from the Dark Lord’s downfall? This is about saving who we can, when we can,” Salazar says. “You are not the first Slytherin I’ve encountered among the Dark Lord’s Court who realized their mistake too late, but felt they were trapped by the danger You-Know-Who truly represents.”

Regulus Black swallows hard, his right hand clamping down on his left arm, just over the Dark Mark hidden by his robes. “It isn’t only the matter of being in the Dark Lord’s company. Going anywhere in the world is now a risk of death because of his ability to kill any of us through this damned Mark!” He suddenly frowns. “Suppose I believe you. Suppose I believe all that you’re saying to me. Can you prove it?”

Salazar rolls up his sleeve. “I bear no Dark Mark,” he demonstrates, “though when I disguise myself as a Marked Death Eater, a mimicry of it appears on my skin.”

“That is certainly a step in the right direction,” Regulus Black allows. “Is there anything else you can grant me to prove yourself?”

“Martinus Flint was part of the Underground. He was killed by the Dark Lord during the holiday festivities on Christmas Day 1976.”

Regulus Black shivers. “Flint was named a traitor, but no one mentioned anything of an Underground.”

“Martinus was wise enough not to mention anything of us, but still fool enough to let sentiment rule his hand.” Salazar still mourns and regrets Martinus’s death. “The Dark Lord killed Martinus because he believed his wife would join him in exile to safeguard their infant son. Gertrude Bulstrode Flint turned her husband over to the Dark Lord for what she viewed as his treachery.”

“She sounds like she would have made a good Black,” Regulus Black mutters.

Salazar shakes his head. “You’ve never spent time with a Black who represents what a member of your family is truly meant to be.” The next name he will mention is one that still pains him to speak of. “Blythe Petersen was also part of the Underground.”

Regulus Black’s eyes widen. “The insane bastard who attempted to poison the Dark Lord in February? They tell stories of him to all the Death Eater initiates to see if we’ve the stones to continue on once we’re told of how Petersen was dealt with.”

“It was not an attempt. It was a success. Alas for everyone else, the poison didn’t work. If Blythe had ever once mentioned he’d planned to do something so fucking insane, I’d have warned him it was a wasted effort.”

“What the fuck?” Regulus Black gapes at him. “Was the Dark Lord immune?”

“Something of that nature, yes.” Salazar considers uttering the word _Horcrux_ and then discards it for now. He isn’t certain why, but it feels like the correct decision. “I can also ask Jewel Burke to speak with you, Regulus Black. She can confirm everything that I tell you is true.”

“It’s just Regulus, please—wait. Madam _Burke?_ ” Regulus asks in disbelief. “She’s part of this Underground of yours? _Her?_ ”

“Do you not recall what the Dark Lord did to her only child?” Salazar asks in a soft voice.

Regulus snaps his jaw shut, turning a faint shade of green. “Severus told me what was done to Octavian. I think now he might have been trying to warn me away from taking the Mark, but I wasn’t listening. As usual. But…Madam Burke? Truly?”

“Jewel is a prickly one, I’ll grant you that, but after the Dark Lord betrayed the ideals he’d entranced her with? You-Know-Who may very well have eliminated the Burke name by murdering Octavian as a plaything, a warning to other Death Eaters to mind their words and deeds. She is done with him.”

“Then—then yes,” Regulus decides. “I would speak with her, please.”

Salazar casts his Patronus, which causes Regulus to leap back. “Who the _hell_ has a Gorgon Patronus?” he yelps.

“I do,” Salazar responds dryly. “Madam Burke, I’ve a guest who would like to speak to you regarding your political affiliations. We’re meeting at the place I told you of a few days ago.”

A fennec fox Patronus returns to them a moment later. It regards them warily before speaking. “Five minutes, Saul. Do have proper seating arranged. I have no desire to sit in the grass and find _beetles_ in my robes again.”

Salazar smiles and turns his wand upon the winter grasses that are still determinedly clinging to the hillside. He encourages their growth until the brush is thick and tall, and then weaves the grass together until it holds to the shape of an armchair a lady would appreciate. For Regulus, he calls forth a mushroom spore from the soil and enlarges it, strengthening it until it can function as a seat. He does caution Regulus not to wobble on it too much. One can only do so much for a mushroom stem’s strength and stability.

“You won’t be sitting?” Regulus asks, still eying the enlarged mushroom with apprehension.

“I’m a bit nervous. I prefer to pace to keep my thoughts from racing away from me.”

Regulus stares at him again. “You are a confusing person. You’re the one with this Underground. You have the power in this situation.”

“And you could easily choose to Apparate directly back to the Dark Lord, telling tales,” Salazar retorts.

Regulus’s expression twists in realization. “That hadn’t actually occurred to me. I think…I think, perhaps, I made my decision the moment you handed me that bit of paper back at the manor. I would still prefer to speak with Madam Burke, though.”

“Of course.”

Jewel Talbot Burke is prompt, arriving exactly at the five-minute mark she decided upon. “Regulus Black,” she greets him politely, her expression as cool as her voice.

Regulus bows to her. “It is a pleasure to see you tonight.”

“Is it?” Jewel regards the woven grass furniture, rolls her eyes, and then sits down on it in a display of perfect grace. Salazar thinks, once again, that Estefania would have enjoyed Jewel’s company. “You wish to know the truth regarding the Underground.”

“I do.” Regulus dithers for a moment, a nervous deviation from Pure-blood habit, and then sits down on the mushroom. “I am sorry about Octavian. He did not…I didn’t witness it, but he didn’t deserve that.”

Jewel’s smile is faint, but genuine. “Thank you. Very few are brave enough to offer such sentiment to me, given _our_ _Lord’s_ treatment of him.”

“Is he why?” Regulus asks bluntly. “Is your participation in this Underground only about Octavian?”

Jewel regards Regulus with a thoughtful air. “I think, much like you, that the doubts began to grow as we spent more time in the Dark Lord’s inner circles. You especially, having made it to the Third Circle so quickly, and then to the Second, would have seen it sooner than most.”

“You mean the fact that he intends to subjugate us,” Regulus whispers. “It isn’t about protecting magic from Muggles, or keeping Muggle-borns away from ignorant Muggles who might hurt them, or redefining Wizarding Society so that it will be the golden age our parents prattle on about. The Dark Lord wants to rule us all.”

Jewel inclines her head. “Yes, he does. After being so taken by his pretty words, his wonderful speeches, and the beauty of his face, it is one of the harshest things to realize about the Dark Lord: he cares nothing for us, Regulus Black. The Dark Lord cares for no one but himself.”

Again, Regulus insists that Jewel use his given name, and then asks, “Why not just go to Dumbledore’s Order, then? Leaving my brother’s obvious enthusiasm for hexing Death Eaters aside, Cousin Andromeda is involved with them, and she is a Slytherin.”

“Ah, but Andromeda Black Tonks is a Slytherin who married a Muggle-born. She has never borne the Dark Mark.” Jewel’s smile is bitter ice. “Do you truly think Dumbledore’s flock would welcome us, we Slytherins who bear a Mark upon our arms that screams of murder and guilt?”

“They’d hate us,” Regulus murmurs. “Then the goal is to destroy the Dark Lord, return to our lives, and perhaps move on from this nightmare as if it never happened?”

Salazar crosses his arms as he regards the young man sitting on a mushroom. “I’d like to think you would learn a valuable lesson or three from this nightmare. I am willing to settle for your willingness to help destroy You-Know-Who, to protect those he would endanger. I would demand your silence in regards to the entire endeavor. You and Jewel are not the only Slytherins I’ve reclaimed from the Dark Lord’s ranks, though Jewel does a magnificent job of pretending her continued loyalty.”

Jewel’s smile warms a bit in response to the compliment. “Thank you, Saul.”

“You would also need to learn to play nice with the others,” Salazar adds. “Not all of them are rescued Slytherin Death Eaters, but they are allies just the same.”

“Saul has also collected a handful of members from the Order of the Phoenix after saving them from certain death.” Jewel offers Regulus an impassive stare when he gazes at her in bewilderment. “As far as Wizarding Britain is concerned, these members of the Order are deceased. They maintain their false deaths to protect their families from retaliation by the Dark Lord. At least one former Order member spies on the Dark Lord’s Court every time he asks us to gather. They have learned _their_ lesson, harsh as it was, and bear Slytherins no ill will unless that Slytherin is an unrepentant Death Eater.”

“Who?” Regulus asks in a hoarse whisper. “You’ve my word on my magic that I’ll tell no one.”

Jewel considers it for a moment, trading glances with Salazar. He nods; Regulus Black has made his decision. “Teresa Bones Jugson is one such member, though she never had the chance to be a formal part of the Order,” she says. “After being widowed, she ceased using her married name. In the Underground, she instead uses the name Trinity Sutherland.”

Regulus leans back in surprise and nearly breaks the stem of the mushroom. “I thought—the attack on the Bones family in 1973. I thought there was no one left but Amelia Bones and her brother, Lysander. He’s married to a Fawley now, I think.”

“Lysander wed Christina Fawley, Alex Fawley’s far more intelligent sister. Their first child is to be born next June. They, along with Amelia Bones, are high on the list of the Dark Lord’s targets. He is still enraged by their survival of the raid that was meant to exterminate the whole of the Ancient House of Bones.” Jewel sniffs in disdain. “I should have realized then the lengths the Dark Lord was willing to go to in order to cement control over us all, but I believed in the label of Blood Traitor. I was fervent in my fanaticism, and it cost me not only my husband, but our only child.”

Regulus looks sympathetic. “I am sorry,” he says, but Jewel only nods.

“Trinity survived that raid when her husband and children did not, but with severe injuries. It took quite a bit of work to save her from those who saw a young woman struggle to live and thought to make sport of it. Due to other losses, Trinity is now one of the longest-serving members of the Underground aside from myself.”

“The others made their choices, and their intent was noble,” Jewel reminds Salazar. “The losses we’ve suffered are not your fault, not when you’ve gone to such lengths to prevent them.”

“What will you teach me?” Regulus’s expression has set itself firm. He has also done Salazar the kindness of changing the subject.

“If you cannot cast a proper Patronus, one that is capable of speaking, that is first,” Salazar answers him. Regulus flinches; that lesson has not yet been learned, then. “It is not our only means of passing messages, but it is swift, and we have our codes that enable us to say one thing and mean another.”

“You will learn to listen to all, to filter information. You will retain what is necessary and discard what is not,” Jewel continues. “The education your family gave you was valuable, but it is incomplete. What you will learn from Saul, from myself, and perhaps from others? All of the lessons you receive will hone your education to a razor’s edge. We will teach you how to find the secrets in the dark, the truth hidden in the lies. You will learn to bow before a madman and smile, no matter how much your mind seethes with hatred.”

Salazar eyes Regulus, who only appears more determined than before. “Your Mind Magic—what you call Occlumency and Legilimency—will be refined until it is unbreakable. Your shields will seem flimsy to anyone who looks close, for they will be constructs with harmless memories and nonsense below. The real strength of your shielding will be undetectable by all, and that is where the gravest of secrets will be hidden.”

Regulus bites his lip again as he looks at Salazar. “I will do this, I swear it. I just…I don’t want to die.”

“None of us do.” Jewel’s voice is surprisingly kind. “I have nothing left to lose, but I refuse to die for nothing. I would see a young man like yourself survive, and thrive, free from the Dark Lord. I want that for so many of us who proudly bore the silver and green of Slytherin, but I am a realist. Most of the Dark Lord’s followers are fools who will never realize that what he wishes for are not allies and equals, but sycophants and slaves.”


	26. The Magical Village of Wittenham

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Malum invictum ignis._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't think I'd just leave you hanging, did you?
> 
> (Still flailed at by @norcumii <3 )

Regulus Black takes to learning how to be a spy with the same intensity of focus in which he learned the whole of his chosen N.E.W.T. subjects in a single year’s time, among other varying accomplishments. Introducing him to the Willow House is witnessed not by Jewel, but by Amy Malden. Salazar still has no idea which member of the Order of the Phoenix she is, or used to be, and some days it drives him bloody mental.

“Blood wards, huh?” Regulus asks, not sounding very surprised. Given what 12 Grimmauld Place is like, Salazar expected him to be at least passingly familiar with that sort of warding magic.

“Unfortunately for us all, Loyalty Charms—the Fidelius Charm—can be betrayed, and a number of people know where I dwell. It is wartime, and I take the preservation of my home seriously. Unless they are accompanied by myself or another who is already tied to my home, no one can directly Apparate, fly, or walk onto my lands, or enter this house without being tied directly to the wards.” Salazar warns Regulus first: if he is not true in his faith not to reveal the Willow House to the enemy, the consequences are most often fatal. Being tied into the house’s wards is not only their last test of one’s loyalty, but the Underground’s final security measure.

Regulus pricks his finger and bleeds onto the house’s foundation stone without a single complaint. “I had to do that in the cellar of Grimmauld Place before I could leave the house for the first time, anyway,” Regulus explains. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to get back in.”

Amy stares at Regulus. “I’d honestly thought Sirius had exaggerated some of the things I’ve heard him say about your family.”

Regulus shrugs. “Knowing Sirius as I do, he was probably downplaying it,” he says, and Amy shudders. “Yes, our aunt and uncle poisoned him. Often.”

“Dammit, Regulus, that isn’t helping!” Amy scowls. “How old were you when you had to tie yourself to your own house by blood?”

“Five, I think.” Regulus looks out the kitchen windows after they go back upstairs, his eyes tracing the draping branches of the ancient willow tree in the back garden. “Sirius used to—he would antagonize Aunt Cassiopeia and Uncle Pollux whenever he saw them looking too closely at me. He’d…he distracted them, so they would poison him instead of me.”

Amy reaches out and hugs Regulus, which makes him stiffen in surprise before he gingerly pats her back, baffled. “You miss your brother, don’t you?”

“I miss how things were before Hogwarts turned the household into even more of a disaster than it already was,” Regulus admits. “I’d like to—I know I can’t, truly, but it would be nice to be able to tell Sirius that I’m not quite the enemy he still believes me to be.”

“I saw your father’s funeral.” Amy gives Regulus a wry smile. “I know you two idiots have flung curses at each other in the past, but trust me: Sirius doesn’t hate you near as much as you think he does.”

Abraxus Macnair, husband of Guinevere Greengrass Macnair, dies in the very next skirmish that Regulus has no choice but to participate in. “Fuck,” he gasps out later, still trying to catch his breath as he works to keep his panic under control. “I was standing right sodding next to him, Saul. Right next to him! It could have easily have been me.”

“Then please, dear gods, learn to duck when you spy the green of the Killing Curse!”

Salazar isn’t much pleased, either. Meritorious Martha Rosier is another casualty of that battle, a nineteen-year-old woman named for her grandmother, who always chose to use her second given name. This occasionally led to some confusion among the less intelligent Death Eaters, who were baffled by the presence of two Martha Rosiers despite their difference in age, differing appearances, and the fact that the elder Martha is bloody well Martha Rosier _Avery_.

The younger Martha Rosier hadn’t yet outgrown the need to swan about like a complete imbecile during battle. Too many young ones think that wearing a Death Eater’s mask makes them invincible, and thus do not survive long enough to learn otherwise. She was killed by Auror Proudfoot, who will likely be horrified to discover the youth of his opponent once the masks and cloaks are cleared away.

“You did well, otherwise,” Salazar says when it’s safe to do so.

Regulus glances at him in surprise. “Truly?”

“Yes.” Salazar judges it will probably be safe to let Regulus spy on his own by February. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, shall we?”

“Guinevere isn’t going to be pleased,” Monica says later, when she and Salazar have had the chance to review everything that went wrong or right the previous evening. It’s the twenty-ninth of December; tomorrow, all of their time will be taken up by Death Eater celebrations of the New Year that always last too long, and grate on Salazar’s nerves.

“I’d thought she’d settled with the husband her parents had chosen for her.”

Monica raises an eyebrow. “She had, even though it was obvious that she and Abraxus were not a good match. Guinevere Macnair has done everything asked of her like a good little Pure-blood daughter, and it has gained her a dead mother, a step-mother her own age, and now a dead husband that Geronimus doesn’t even pretend to mourn for. I know you’ve been keeping an eye on her, Saul, but I suggest that we now _all_ do so. If she wants out, she is keeping that to herself, but at the very least, we may need to intervene to save another young one from suicide.”

Salazar blows out a disgusted breath. “Augustine Travers might have more to drink than usual this year.”

After they can all escape the burdensome celebrations required of them for spying on Voldemort’s Court on New Year’s Eve and Day, Salazar devotes more time to introducing Regulus to the Willow House and her surrounding village. Regulus lived in the midst of London, yes, but he only ever saw London from the view of a household window. His family avoided any place that was not strictly magic-only, and even that was limited to Britain and the coastal Europe.

The villagers are told that Robert is a cousin escaping an unpleasant family situation, and has come to stay with Saul for a time. It is true, as Regulus currently has not decided upon where he intends to dwell now that he has made his official declaration to the family that, as an adult, he should stand on his own and live in his own separate home for a time. Those of Sherwood-on-the-Marsh accept the tale without hesitation, whereas Regulus’s family shrieked about betrayal in an attempt to keep Regulus pinned under their collective thumbs.

Regulus gazes in the direction of a dark patch of green on the eastern horizon. “Sherwood Forest is nearby, isn’t it?”

Salazar glances at the distant forest. “It is, yes. Why?”

“Wizards grow up hearing tales about Robin Hood, and how he was a secret wizard in the employ of King Richard II to safeguard the kingdom during the Crusades. Sherwood Forest was said to be the magical grove that protected him from the king’s enemies.”

“The King Richard bit is nonsense,” Salazar says, smiling, “which is one of the few truths I’m certain of. When the legends were eventually written down for the first time in Middle English, mythical Robin was said to have dealings with King Edmund, not Richard. By that time, there were enough kings of England bearing that name that pinning down the truth within such legends is difficult.”

“Hmm.” Regulus turns around and glares at Salazar. “Why _Robert?_ ”

“Please do go prancing about in the Muggle world with an uncommon Latin name. I’m sure you’ll have a fine time being so easily tracked by You-Know-Who’s people if they ever suspect you of mischief,” Salazar responds in a dry voice.

Regulus holds up his hands in surrender. “Robert Allan Black is just fine! I would have thought you’d want me to change the family name, though.”

“Black is a common enough Muggle name. As long as you keep to yourself, and keep suspicion at bay, it isn’t the sort of name that will attract magical attention.”

“I didn’t know that,” Robert says thoughtfully. “Does that mean I’ve a number of unknown Muggle relatives?”

“Yes and no, but that is a subject I’d much prefer to discuss later.” Salazar takes that as a sign that he can pass the rest of Robert’s new paperwork into the young man’s hands and not find it a short while later in a rubbish bin. “Robert Allan Black is a man of Muggle origin, but you’re not allowed to have a driving license until you can operate an automobile without destroying both it and yourself. This is a passport, which you will need if it is ever necessary to travel outside this kingdom by non-magical means. It will also serve as a means of Muggle identification in the meantime. The envelope you hold contains a key, instructions on its use, and an address for a small flat in London, one of the Underground’s many safe houses. Keep both safe, or I’ll skin you alive and force you to regrow all of your skin in the same evening.”

Salazar might as well have threatened Robert with a ball of dust, for all the concern he displays. “You’re right. Trinity is terrifyingly efficient,” Robert mutters, holding up a five pound note. “A Muggle’s concept of money is ridiculous.”

“But certainly a great deal lighter than hauling about a sackful of gold,” Salazar replies. “You’re also not allowed to have a credit card until you understand what a credit card is for.”

Robert raises an eyebrow at the unfamiliar term. “That’s probably for the best.”

* * * *

On the eighteen of January, Augustine Travers is one of those selected to attend an unannounced raid against the magical village of Wittenham, near to the Wittenham Clumps just west of Chiltern Hills. Salazar rails about Voldemort’s timing in silence, a vicious diatribe that only quiets when he realizes he won’t be alone. Susan Lewis is impersonating Brigid Macavoy Quirke tonight, though gods know what she’s done with Madam Quirke in the meantime. Salazar does not particularly care, either; it means he’ll have an ally as they attempt to save this village without revealing themselves in the process.

Salazar takes another quick look around at the assembled raiding party. Aside from Augustine Travers and Brigid Quirke, there is Allenford Selwyn Senior, who is meant to lead the attack. Geronimus Greengrass is with them, as is his daughter Guinevere, who is staring at her father with a face carved from hateful stone. The rest are Death Eaters with a difficulty, moments that are most often referred to as _weakness_ in the midst of battle: they refuse to kill their fellow Pure-blood wizards and witches. Lauranna Bulstrode Fleet. Cynthia Yaxley. Igor Karkaroff. Sean Macavoy. Susannah Sinistra Melville. Widowed Vanity Urquhart Mulciber. Geoffrey Prewett.

 _Thinning the ranks, or testing them,_ Salazar thinks, running his thumb along the annoying sharp-edged layers of Travers’s wand. That would definitely explain why the women outnumber the men; Voldemort most often has no use for them.

Then a more alarming thought wanders across Salazar’s mind: _this is not going to end well._

Halfway through the raid, while innocents defend their homes and families in the streets fight off twelve Death Eaters, Allenford Selwyn loses his temper. He shouts at Susannah Melville and Igor Karkaroff about grandstanding instead of _teaching a proper lesson_. Those are the last words anyone hears Allenford Selwyn Senior speak aside from a single phrase, a dreaded incantation that no one uses unless they are desperate.

“ _Malum invictum ignis!_ ”

“GET OUT!” Salazar shouts, uncaring if anyone notices that Augustine Travers’s voice is starting to shift. He had no chance to take another dose of Multa Facies Sucus, and it’s now the least of his concerns. He is masked; that will have to do. “EVERYONE! NOW!”

He hears two distinct cracks before the fire roars up. Sinistra Melville and Igor Karkaroff weren’t fool enough to linger, then. Not after what Allenford Selwyn has just unleashed.

“WHAT THE HELL HAS THAT IDIOT DONE?” Brigid Quirke yells in fury. Susan does not sound much like Quirke anymore, either, and is also relying on the anonymity of a Death Eater’s mask.

“Died for what he’s unleashed, most likely!” Fiendfyre ensnared the nearest three houses within moments of the spell being cast. Allenford Selwyn was standing in the center of what is now a burning maelstrom. If anyone was still in those homes, they are already lost. “Where are the others?”

“Oh, they’ve fucked off already,” Susan responds. “Saul, these people—!”

“We’ll do what we can, and leave Travers and Quirke to deal with the consequences. You-Know-Who told Selwyn to teach this village a lesson, not burn it to the ground!”

They rescue who they can reach before Fiendfyre consumes them, the flames leaping from house to house. The villagers of Wittenham don’t hex the two Death Eaters remaining in their midst; they’re far too busy trying to save their families.

Fiendfyre spreads fast. Too fast. Salazar knows they are losing people, but there is nothing to be done. They Apparate others out of the village, those too young or too infirm to manage it on their own. Salazar nearly gets caught by the fucking fire when he runs into a house to retrieve its last occupant, a boy who is perhaps a year or two shy of attending Hogwarts.

“FUCK!” Salazar screams when he turns, taking that first darting tongue of magical flame to his arm instead of allowing it to harm the child. Then he grits his teeth and Apparates, spilling both himself and the boy to the ground.

For too many moments, all Salazar can do is lie there. Fiendfyre lives up to its name. He is one thousand years old. He has quite a number of things to compare it to, and still this nearly wins out over all of them. A burn from those flames is agony.

Then Salazar pushes himself to his feet, ready to go back in, when a hand on his uninjured arm stops him. “It’s too late.”

Salazar gives Susan’s skeletal mask a blank stare before he faces the village again. All of it is ablaze, with Fiendfyre’s magical fingers seeking out anything else nearby that it might also burn. A tree unfortunate enough to have grown too close to the village explodes from the sudden intrusion of heat and fire. Fortunately for the rest of South Oxfordshire, a great deal of dirt and rock surrounds Wittenham that won’t burn. There will be twisted shapes of new glass lying about in the morning, but the fire will go no further.

“How many do you think we lost?” Susan asks quietly.

Salazar shakes his head. “I’ve no—I don’t know.” He isn’t certain he ever wants to know.

“Hey, Mister?”

Salazar and Susan turn away from the flames. The boy Salazar rescued is being held by a sobbing mother. A man who resembles him, possibly his father, is holding a smaller child with one arm while clutching the older boy’s shoulder with his free hand. “Yes?”

“We know you’re, y’know, Death Eaters and all, but…there’s another one of you. Down that way.” The boy points to the southern end of the fire. “Dad says she’s saying a lot of bad words and stripping off her robes. I just didn’t want you to hurt her, is all.”

Susan nods while Salazar is still trying to find words. He needs a pain-relieving potion, soon, or he’ll be useless. “We will not. Thank you for telling us. I hope—” Her voice breaks. “I’m sorry.” She grabs hold of Salazar and Apparates them both to the southern, flaming end of the village before the shock wears off and wands appear once more.

There is, indeed, a Death Eater standing beyond the reach of the flames, no longer cloaked in a Death Eater’s black robes. Given the angry snarl on her face as Guinevere Macnair flings her mask into Fiendfyre’s greedy clutches, Salazar doesn’t think that _Death Eater_ is an apt title any longer.

One of them must make a sound, or Guinevere Macnair is intent upon survival. She whirls on them, wand raised, rage twisting her features. “Don’t you fucking think on it!” she shouts. “As far as you know, I died with that fucking idiot Selwyn!”

Salazar removes his mask, revealing a face she would be entirely unfamiliar with. It’s harder to toss his hood back, and he hisses in pain as fabric catches on his burnt right arm. Wand arm. Fuck, but now is the wrong time for that! “Good for—” Salazar has to catch his breath. “Good for you, then.”

“Who the hell are you?” Guinevere Macnair asks, her wand not budging. “I’ll kill you both if you don’t speak of it right now!”

“I like her. She’s practical.” Susan pulls her hood back and removes her mask, revealing silver-blue eyes, short black hair, and a Welsh complexion. “Hello, Guinevere.”

Guinevere Macnair’s wand shakes before she lowers it, gaping at Susan. Salazar is probably doing the same. He’d had no idea, none at all—

“This is a trick. It has to be,” Guinevere Macnair whispers.

“It isn’t,” Euphemia Silvestara Grace replies, smiling. “I did just the same as you’re doing right now, though I decided I’d had enough of the family bullshit by April 1978. I go by Susan Lewis of late, Gwen. This burnt idiot standing next to me—”

“There is no need to insult the burnt idiot, thank you,” Salazar mutters.

“—is Saul Luiz. You might recall the name, or you might not, but he’s part of the reason I’m a member of his Underground.”

“His Underground.” Guinevere Macnair’s Norse-blonde brows draw together. “If you came here with the others…”

“Properly, it’s the Underground, and we’re spies devoted to ridding Britain of that daft bastard of a Dark Lord. We’re an Underground that doesn’t care about the colors worn by anyone in Hogwarts. It’s our actions here that matter,” Susan says. “Your mother deserved better than the nonsense your father pulled, by the way.”

“Yes. She did.” Guinevere Macnair is still frowning. “I don’t recall the name Saul Luiz. Why does he mean anything to you?”

“Because…” Susan glances at Salazar, smiling. She so resembles her namesake, for all that she inherited her mother’s pale eyes. “My aunt Euphemia Potter called him a friend, and despite what my mother later decided, my aunt was no fool.”

“No. She was not.” Salazar smiles back, pleased and beyond relieved to discover that part of Euphemia Potter’s legacy still exists in a single surviving Grace. “And Euphemia would be so proud to see where you are standing now.”

“Can you both perhaps save the sentiment for later? I’d like to be away from this place before the Dark Lord realizes what’s gone wrong and sends Death Eaters to find out why three of us are missing. I highly doubt Augustine Travers and Madam Quirke are lying dead somewhere,” Guinevere Macnair snaps.

“Shit. I think I’d rather walk back into that fire than drink anything flavored by Augustine Travers right now,” Salazar whinges.

Susan rolls her eyes. “I don’t really blame you for that. Gwen, come here. I’ll take us all to my home. That should be neutral enough, shouldn’t it?”

Guinevere Macnair takes another look at the fire before she marches forward. “Fine. But if I discover this really is a trick—”

Susan Apparates them in the midst of Guinevere Macnair’s threat, which dries up into nothing as Guinevere Macnair discovers her now very Muggle surroundings. “I…what?”

“Welcome to my home. We’re currently in London,” Susan says dryly. “Don’t leave the house, Gwen; you’re safe behind my wards. I’ll be back as soon as I can explain my absence to You-Know-Who. Saul will at least have the excuse of needing to care for a burn, so Augustine Travers will be leaving early.”

“You’ve your excuse right there. You were rescuing Augustine Travers from Allenford Selwyn’s stupidity. I’ll be going home directly afterwards, though.” Salazar can feel pain ramping up. He wonders if he has brains enough left to in his head to Summon a pain-killing potion after his pockets prove to be empty of them. “I’m not going to be of use for much longer, not after taking a hit from that bloody damned fire.” He glances at Susan’s new guest. “I do hope we’ll speak again, Guinevere Macnair.”

Guinevere Macnair looks around at her surroundings with puzzled curiosity before facing them again. “Greengrass,” she says. “It’s just…it’s just Greengrass, now.”

* * * *

Voldemort pretends solicitous concern when Brigid Quirke returns with wounded Augustine Travers, both of them claiming they were close to Allenford Selwyn when the idiot unleashed Fiendfyre. Salazar doesn’t care any longer after the Dark Lord accepts the injury and its too-brief treatment as the reason for their delay in returning. Voldemort’s artifice almost appears genuine when he speaks of Guinevere Macnair’s loss to that same fire, but Salazar knows better.

Thinning the ranks. Voldemort doesn’t regret Allenford Selwyn Senior’s death at all. Neither does Salazar; a man who would be foolish enough to unleash Fiendfyre in the very village he still stood within is a man this war needs not at all.

“Do you know how many were lost to Selwyn’s foolishness?” Voldemort asks, but he is speaking to Augustine Travers, not Brigid Quirke.

Fuck. Salazar pulls himself together enough to answer, and there is no artifice to the slur that could now be attributed to both drink and pain. “No, but…several. Ten or more, at least, my Lord.”

“You stayed to assist?” Voldemort asks of Brigid Quirke.

Susan tenses beside him. “We did, my Lord. There is a difference between stirring terror and allowing an idiot to decimate an entire Wizarding population. I apologize if we overstepped and misinterpreted your instructions,” she adds, bowing her head.

“No, no,” Voldemort responds in an airy tone. Susan relaxes; that sort of response is almost never a prelude to _Cruciatu_ torture. “It was Selwyn who did that. No matter. My goal was still accomplished.” He waves a genial hand. “Augustine’s wound will need treating if he is to continue to serve. He will, will he not?”

“Of course, my Lord,” Salazar replies, trying not to grimace as he bows his head. It seems as if every movement now pulls on burnt skin. “Though I confess it may be a week or two before my arm will point a wand in reliable fashion.”

“Be here on Imbolc, and that will not matter,” Voldemort says, turning away.

“Fuck,” Salazar repeats under his breath. Susan steers him towards Jewel, Desdemona, and Regulus. “Privacy,” he gasps.

“No, potions,” Regulus retorts, and goes to accost Severus Snape. Salazar hopes the young brewer isn’t in a mood to poison Augustine Travers.

“Both,” Desdemona says dryly, casting the charm. “Guinevere?”

Susan shakes her head so that Salazar won’t need to. Perhaps later, Desdemona and Jewel will learn of Guinevere Macnair’s survival, but not now. He hadn’t even planned for Desdemona to learn of Regulus’s participation in the Underground, but having another in Voldemort’s Court who doesn’t need to hide their identity proved too useful, too quickly.

“Damn that fool,” Jewel mutters, glowering in the direction of the Selwyn clan. “Guinevere deserved no such fate.”

“Few do, though I’ll not be arguing against Allenford Senior if you say he deserved it.” Salazar accepts the pain-killing potion that Regulus returns with. The liquid in the corked phial feels correct to his senses, a pristine example of a potion. From a young man who crafted a rust-removing potion at the age of five, Salazar would expect nothing less than perfection for something so simple to brew.

“Sorry, Severus isn’t carrying anything with him right now for burns, though he’s decided if idiots are going to start tossing around Fiendfyre, he’ll be remedying that lack,” Regulus explains. “It’s safe, I checked. Severus doesn’t have any reason to object to Augustine Travers right now. In fact, given that you two idiots stayed to help, I imagine he thinks better of you both.”

“It’s too bad he is thinking better of the wrong individuals,” Desdemona murmurs, scowling. “Oh, there is Geronimus. I wonder what wisdom is going to pour forth from his stupid gullet.”

To his credit, Geronimus Greengrass appears genuinely shocked by his daughter’s death. Then he ruins it by saying, “Well, at least Anastacia is already pregnant,” whereupon it takes a great deal of harsh whispering for Susan to remind Salazar that they can’t kill the idiot, even if Geronimus Greengrass has earned the pleasure.

Salazar is accosted by Monica and Jewel until he concedes that until the burn on his arm heals, he is not to be spying. He can use his wand just as well in his left hand, but they’re correct when they point out that the healing swath of skin marring his right arm from wrist to shoulder will slow him down. Besides, most of those they impersonate couldn’t use a wand left-handed to save their own lives.

The only good thing about Salazar’s injury, Jewel comments later, was the joy of granting Augustine Travers a matching burn while he was unconscious and drooling in his own liquor-reeking bed. He won’t remember anything about the raid that destroyed Wittenham, but the burn will convince Augustine Travers that he participated, just as it will convince others.

“ _Wow. Three major injuries in a single century. Good job_ ,” Nizar’s portrait hisses after seeing the full extent of the damage.

Salazar is trying hard to pour potions on burnt skin without looking at it, as he is not much fond of resembling the product of a barbeque. “ _That helps nothing right now. I think I might actually prefer Antioch’s wand to this._ ”

“No.” Nizar’s brief, harsh denial in English is followed by a return to Parseltongue. “ _I’d prefer never to hear you say anything that fucking stupid ever again._ ”

“ _I make no promises, little brother._ ”

The _Daily Prophet_ is so useless of late that Salazar would discard it entirely, but there is always a chance that it might hold something of import. The day after the village fire, the newspaper’s front page announces the complete destruction of Magical Wittenham. No one interviewed seems to be in the mood to rebuild on its remaining ashes. Some of their losses are mentioned, but there is no specific tally for the dead. Salazar would blame their shoddy reporting, but given the nature of Fiendfyre, it’s possible that no one yet knows.

Allenford Selwyn Junior, despite not being in any of the Circles previous to the eighteenth, is invited to take his idiot father’s place in the Innermost Circle. Maybe Voldemort hopes no one will notice he has replaced one Allenford Selwyn with another. They do look enough alike that someone paying scant attention may not notice the difference, but otherwise Allenford the Younger brings nothing to the Innermost Circle except for the continuation of gold from the family vault.

Guinevere Greengrass is firmly set on joining the Underground, thinking it just vengeance for her mother’s unnecessary death, and to spite her father—who, they discover, could not even be arsed to grant his daughter a funeral. Geronimus Greengrass is absent from a full week of Death Eater gatherings after that announcement, riding close to missing Imbolc (an unforgivable lapse). Anastacia Greengrass coolly informs anyone who asks that Geronimus is not feeling well, but will return to them soon in good health.

“He deserved whatever she did to him.” Monica narrows her eyes at Salazar when he winces while trying to adjust his position in his chair. “I do believe that Geronimus forgot that not only did he marry a woman too young for him, he married a Branstone. They’re not as dramatic about it as other families, but Branstones do not tolerate fools.”

“Well, it isn’t as if I’ve anything else to do,” Guinevere Greengrass says of the Underground, though Salazar quickly learns that she prefers Gwen. “I was a good girl and wed a proper Pure-blood idiot in 1978, and since I was now properly wed, what did I need school for? I thought a Death Eater’s life was exactly what I wanted, as that’s all I’d ever been told. Then Mother died, and while I didn’t like Abraxus, it wasn’t exactly joyful to suddenly find myself a widow. At least Regulus had sense enough to graduate, and graduate early! I wouldn’t have been able to do such a thing, and now I’m a bit too dead to return to Hogwarts to try.”

Salazar has no idea when Susan convinced Gwen to allow herself to be tied into the Willow House’s wards, but it speaks well of her intentions. It certainly marks her as a better person than her foolish parents.

“How long have you been thinking on how to get out of it?” Susan asks Gwen, sipping at a mug of hot cocoa that she made for each of them after raiding Salazar’s kitchen. Salazar much prefers cocoa the way he was first introduced to the drink, but explaining the differences feels like an exercise in exhaustion right now.

“Two or three months. Abraxus dying was just the nail in the coffin. Please excuse the pun.” Gwen sighs. “I hope you’re not attempting to talk me out of joining the Underground.”

“On the contrary…” Salazar waits until Gwen looks at him. “I think we need you.”

Gwen doesn’t seem surprised, only intrigued. “Why?”

“I’ve no idea, but I have a mastery in Divination. When that particular bit of magic speaks up…” Salazar once again tries to focus on the sensation, an impending event that Divination is trying to warn him of. “Imbolc is approaching, and I can’t be there. At the least, you standing in my place that day will mean that the Underground has someone at their backs who they can trust and rely upon.”

Gwen bites her lip. “Will they, though? I mean—I’m a former Macnair, and I’m a Greengrass. What reason would they have?”

“This is why my name is now Susan Elizabeth Lewis,” Susan tells her. “If they know you’re Underground, but not who you used to be, they have no reason to care. By the time another one of us might learn of your real name, you’ll have proven to them that they have nothing to fear.”

“Another name. Can mine be Gwenneth?” Gwen blurts out. “I know it’s close to Guinevere, but it’s—hearing someone call me Gwen is soothing. Friends called me by that name. Never family. Never _them._ ”

“Gwenneth it is, then,” Salazar agrees. Trinity will find that an easy identity to create and integrate into Muggle bureaucracy. “Gwenneth Anna Brown.”

Gwen tilts her head, sounding out the name with silent movements of her lips. “I like it.”

* * * *

“Dumbledore has posted job offerings at Hogwarts. One of them is for Potions. Convince Dumbledore to hire you.” Severus rolls his eyes as he approaches Hogsmeade on foot, aware of the anti-Apparition wards that have been in place since the village was attacked in 1975. “Of course, my Lord. I’ll get right on accomplishing that impossible task.” The Dark Lord must be in the mood to torture someone. Perhaps multiple someones. Severus would much prefer it _not_ be him.

As if Dumbledore isn’t already aware of the fact that Severus is a Death Eater. As if that man would let a former Slytherin, let alone a Death Eater Slytherin, anywhere near his precious baby Gryffindors.

What makes it galling is that Dumbledore not only accepted Severus’s application regarding the posted offering for potions, he is willing to _meet_ with him. That alone is suspicious. It should also be obvious to Dumbledore that Severus would _not_ want to be Horace Slughorn’s assistant. He’d rather kill the thieving, lying bastard.

Killing Slughorn would be a temporary delight. The Dark Lord would kill him shortly afterwards.

At some point, Severus started to despise his life, but he doesn’t see any reason to stop.

The shit weather isn’t helping his mood, either. The wind keeps lifting his collar, letting cold rain slip inside despite the number of charms Severus is using to keep it at bay. Fucking hell.

“You’d best not be here to stir up trouble,” is Aberforth Dumbledore’s greeting when Severus enters the Hog’s Head Inn.

“No. Not unless you count willingly subjecting myself to the potential necessity of referring to your brother as my _employer,_ ” Severus responds scathingly. “I’d rather be dipped in acid, by the way.”

Aberforth grimaces. “Interviews are happening upstairs. Do your best to botch it, is my suggestion. I wouldn’t want to put up with him, either, no matter whose side I’m on.”

“This, unfortunately, isn’t about sides,” Severus says. It’s a truth and a lie both. Severus is doing this because he still prefers life to death, but he was also ordered to do so by a man the Order of the Phoenix is trying to defeat. What makes Severus think better of Aberforth is that as long as one doesn’t enter the Hog’s Head cloaked and masked like a ridiculous buffoon, there are no “sides” in the tavern. Behave yourself, clean up any mess you make, pay your tab. Simple rules to follow.

Aberforth has thrown out a number of idiot Death Eaters for not being able to manage that simplicity. Severus always does his best to avoid being thrown out into the street like rubbish.

Severus goes up the stairs, instinctively quelling their squeaky nature with a brief charm. Every door is standing open, every miserly room in the inn empty, except for the closed door at the end of the hall. He can hear voices, though the majority of the noise is provided by someone feminine-sounding, prattling on.

There are no rules against listening in on another’s job interview. It’s a bit rude, perhaps, but he isn’t spying at the bloody keyhole. That is, again, not the point. He is here in order to assure a temperamental Dark Lord that he did at least try to convince Dumbledore that Hogwarts needs a Death Eater roaming its halls.

Voldemort is no doubt doing something else with his evening. Severus wonders what the morning paper will say. What family name will be endangered next, or wiped out entirely. There are so many whom the Dark Lord wishes to see destroyed…

“—and that is why I should certainly replace Professor Thorn,” the feminine voice is saying. “He was my mentor, as you well know, Professor—”

“Albus is fine, Sybill.” That’s Dumbledore, sounding unchanged. Not that it has been very long since Severus last saw the old bastard.

Severus frowns, trying to place Sybill and the odd emphasis she is placing on her voice. Both sound familiar, and there weren’t many students who took Thorn seriously. Divination as a subject? Yes. Thorn? Usually they were all too busy mocking the charlatan.

“—I’m afraid, however, that for the post of Divination, I’m looking for something more…substantial,” Dumbledore says. Severus is not the least bit surprised. “In these dark times, it’s vital—”

“Oh, I assure you,” Sybill begins to say, and then her voice _changes._ Severus isn’t going to forget that change, not for the rest of his bloody life. The faux-mystical quality drops away, as well as the light, airy tone.

When Sybill next speaks, it’s with the groaning depth of rocks in the earth. “ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…_ ”

“What’s taking so long?” Aberforth asks from the end of the hall.

Severus whirls on him. “Shut it!” he hisses, realizing he is wide-eyed and probably bloody terrified as Sybill continues repeating her prophecy. “That oddball your brother was interviewing is prophesizing the fall of the fucking Dark Lord!”

Aberforth gapes at him before he rushes forward on surprisingly light feet. “You’re shittin’ me, you are.”

“I’m not!” Severus leans against the wall, head back, but he isn’t concerned with listening any longer. He isn’t going to forget that prophecy.

Prophecy. Voldemort has finally done enough to piss off God, and now there is a prophecy foretelling his defeat.

Voldemort defeated. Oh, _fuck_.

“You all right?” Aberforth asks quietly. “You’ve always been a pale one, but you look ill.”

“I just want this war to be over—” Severus says as the door opens.

“—and stay out, this time!” Aberforth shouts, tossing Severus out the back door of the inn. He collides with a line of bins and rolls over in the mud.

“What the fuck just happened?” Severus gasps out.

“That’s what your lot gets for spying at keyholes,” Aberforth says, and then slams the door shut.

Spying? At keyholes? What?

Everything settles into place a moment later, and he forgets why he was confused. There is a prophecy foretelling Voldemort’s defeat. That has to be of more value to the Dark Lord than any fucking job posting!

As if Severus wanted to be Slughorn’s bloody _assistant_ , anyway.

* * * *

Salazar is doing well enough on Imbolc that not being in Voldemort’s Court to see what is happening makes him pace the length and breadth of his house, over and over again. He can’t sleep. His healing arm itches and will probably assist this bedamned century in driving him to madness.

In the blue-silver light of predawn, a Patronus comes to him. Lucretia’s brilliant little long-eared bat flits around the room before settling on top of a lampshade. “If you’re capable of it, come to the Pettigrew Estate. It’s not a complete slaughter, but it’s so close I don’t think it matters all that much.”

Shit. Salazar fetches his brother’s Invisibility Cloak, not certain he could maintain the Invisibility Charm for the entire time, and Apparates. He lands within walking distance of the manor’s exterior gardens and finds the whole place bloody well crawling with Aurors. They’re all working among fallen bodies. Many of them.

Lucretia Black Prewett is standing alone, overseeing the mess and looking as if she hasn’t slept in three weeks. Salazar certainly knows how she feels. “It’s only me,” he says.

“That was prompt.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Neither could I,” Lucretia says. “I never sleep on Imbolc any longer. We’re looking at this year’s reason why.”

“Fuck.” Salazar has to close his eyes and turn away as one of the bodies is transported out of the manor. The polite covering of the white sheet does not disguise the slight stature of a child. “You said it wasn’t a complete slaughter.”

“Clarence and Leigh Pettigrew escaped with their wives, Edith and Enid. The Pettigrews still have Clarence sitting in the Wizengamot, but not much else remains of the family.”

Salazar doesn’t care that his scowl is hidden by his hood. Lucretia will be able to all but hear the expression when he speaks. “Clarence and Leigh Pettigrew are both Marked fucking Death Eaters!”

“I know that. You know that. Rufus fucking well knows that. Will Barty Crouch Senior listen to us mere Aurors?” Lucretia shakes her head in blatant disgust. “Clarence is one of the more powerful voices on the Wizengamot. Barty wants to run against Fudge and become Minister for Magic. It won’t be in time for this election—Crouch is smart enough to know that you don’t unseat your Minister during wartime, even if that Minister might be overseeing a losing war. Barty isn’t going to fuck up his chances for the 1988 election by accusing Clarence Pettigrew on our word alone, and now Clarence will have the vote of sympathy on his side for the loss of his family.”

“Barty Crouch Senior is a blithering fucking idiot,” Salazar says flatly.

“Oh, I can think of worse to call him,” Lucretia replies, baring her teeth. “The wards for the manor weren’t broken with a sacrifice, Saul. They weren’t broken at all. The wards were lowered.”

“Which could only be done by someone within the manor. Someone with the power to control those wards.” Salazar shakes his head. “Does Crouch believe willful stupidity will help Wizarding Britain to win this war?”

“Why not? Cornelius Fudge is not being attacked by Death Eaters. There have been hardly any assassination attempts, and that man is less intelligent than a fucking fence post,” Lucretia retorts. “Stupidity as a means of self-defence seems to work just fine for them.”

Salazar growls under his breath. “Edith and Enid Pettigrew are ignorant of their husbands’ actions. I think if Enid Wilkes Pettigrew learned of her husband’s doings, she’d string him up on a lamppost in Diagon Alley with bright flashing signs to point out the idiot’s Dark Mark.”

Lucretia looks surprised. “I’m glad to know that. Enid and Edith have been kept in seclusion, as had the—well, the rest of the family, but that seclusion didn’t do them much good once it was sabotaged from the inside. I don’t understand, though. The Death Eaters escaping with their wives, I can believe. They would have known the moment their Master came that their home was this year’s Imbolc target.”

“But why would the Pettigrews willingly sacrifice their own family’s strength on the Dark Lord’s altar?” Salazar asks, and Lucretia nods. “I don’t know, but they would hardly be the first to do so. What of Clarence and Edith’s son? Was he slaughtered with the others?” Salazar knows he couldn’t have been, but he needs to know where Peter Pettigrew took himself on Imbolc.

“He wasn’t at home, thank goodness,” Lucretia says in obvious relief. “The Death Eaters wouldn’t have stopped at killing Peter. They would have made an _example_ out of a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Peter has a flat near Diagon. He’s hosting his surviving family right now.”

Salazar opens his mouth, nearly telling Lucretia that being in his flat when searched for doesn’t preclude Peter from guilt, but then he holds his tongue. He doesn’t need magic to tell him that incriminating Peter Pettigrew might very well change his little brother’s history. Instead, he says, “I’ve heard there are rumors beginning to circulate among the Order that they’ve a traitor in their midst.” Amy and Lisa are especially upset by this. In part, they’re worried that it’s true, but they also worry that the Underground’s activities are being perceived as a traitorous threat.

Lucretia shakes her head in dismissal. “Oh, they’re literally just that. Just rumors. I’d trust every single member of the Order with my life, and with that of my Aurors.”

 _I wouldn’t,_ Salazar thinks, but again, that is something he cannot say. He can’t suggest that it might have been Peter Pettigrew who lowered the wards, that his parents, aunt, and uncle survived only because of the status Clarence and Leigh Pettigrew hold in Voldemort’s Court.

Richard Jugson’s chosen initiation was to slaughter his twin brother, his brother’s wife, their children, and anyone else of the Bones clan he crossed paths with. Peter Pettigrew could have chosen similarly, which would immediately gain him a great deal of Voldemort’s favor. A man who would sell out his best friends might not be above selling out his own family.

“Oh, we did discover that Alexander Fawley is dead,” Lucretia adds before Salazar can depart.

“Albert Fawley’s father.” Salazar had wondered earlier in the year why it was Alex who would be inheriting the Wizengamot seat instead of it being returned to his grandfather, and assumed Alexander Fawley was simply feeling too old for the task. “How?”

“Definitely murder,” Lucretia replies. “He was found on the coast near Devon. I’d blame the Grace family, but they’re all gone now. Torture, followed by the Killing Curse. Hazarding a guess, I would say that Alexander Fawley did something to anger You-Know-Who.”

“I don’t recall ever seeing Alexander Fawley attend to one of You-Know-Who’s stupid gatherings. Was he Marked?”

Lucretia nods. “He was. Alexander Fawley was still considered respectable by the Wizarding public, so Barty Crouch hid the fact that Alexander was Marked to preserve the family’s reputation.”

Salazar’s head starts to ache. “I say again: that man is a fucking idiot. Or does he conveniently not recall that he helped sentence Albert Fawley to Azkaban?”

“I think Barty Crouch might forget about the people he sends to Azkaban on purpose,” Lucretia says. “Even a year in Azkaban might as well be a death sentence, and Barty has a heavy hand. Imagine the guilt he would feel.”

“I would then imagine that Barty Crouch deserves to feel all of it.”

* * * *

Robert Apparates into Salazar’s home that evening, grey in the face with exhaustion, and brings news that puts the whole of his little brother’s known history in doubt. “What do you mean, there’s a fucking prophecy about You-Know-Who?” Salazar asks in complete disbelief.

“I know!” Robert slumps over Salazar’s kitchen counter, still trying to breathe. “Sorry, Saul. That mad bastard has had us all at it since last night, scouring records from one end of this isle to the other. We’ve even been to bloody Ireland, and that lot are doing their best to keep our shit off their lawn!”

“Right. That’s it.” Salazar pours a shot of magically brewed vodka and slides the glass over to Robert. “Drink that, and then start over. Begin with this prophecy, please.”

While Robert is busy chasing the first shot of vodka with two more, Salazar goes to his brother’s portrait. “ _Did you know of this and conveniently forget to tell me?_ ”

“ _The fuck, Sal?_ ” Nizar’s portrait looks shell-shocked. “ _Is this why? This entire time? A fucking stupid prophecy meant my parents had to be murdered?_ ”

Salazar wisely takes that to mean that no, Nizar did not forget, conveniently or otherwise. “ _And you were never told. Gods damn that man!_ ”

“ _Sal. I know that Myself will have to figure this out on his own, if I haven’t done so already, but Dumbledore…_ ”

“ _I know. Let me attend to Robert before he drinks himself into oblivion._ ”

Robert shoves the shot glass aside when Salazar returns to the kitchen counter. “All right. Some Seer had a Greek Cassandra’s Curse moment of prophecy at dusk yesterday. Do you know the type?”

Salazar’s blood runs cold. _Bloody Imbolc._ “Yes, I know the type. They’re rare, and I’m glad not to be one of them.”

“I don’t know much about her identity. We know that her name is Sybill, and she said she mentored under Professor Thorn—”

“ _Fucking HER?_ ” Nizar’s portrait yells in Parseltongue.

Robert makes a disgruntled face. “What was that noise?”

“Never mind that for now. Keep going, please,” Salazar requests. It seems soon-to-be-Professor Trelawney is not such a fraud, after all.

“You-Know-Who ordered Severus to apply for one of the Hogwarts postings Dumbledore announced would be available at the start of next term,” Robert says. “Personally, I thought it was just meant to be a lure and a trap, but apparently it’s true about that fucking charlatan Thorn retiring. I imagine this Sybill may be his replacement, but I don’t know for certain. Severus certainly wasn’t interested in being Slughorn’s assistant, but the Dark Lord has been in a temper, and slaughtering the Pettigrews didn’t help. Receiving news of the prophecy made his temper _worse._ ” Robert shudders. “I hate the Cruciatus Curse. I don’t know how Severus can endure it and still be dignified afterwards. I’m envious.”

“Robert,” Salazar murmurs. That works when loud words would not, recalling Robert to the conversation at hand.

“Right, sorry. I’m just—I’m rattled. Everyone is badly rattled, Saul.”

“And I blame you not at all.” What will this cost them? How many well-laid plans are about to become waste because of Albus Dumbledore’s inability to speak the truth to those who deserve nothing less? Such as this might well convince Helga to emerge from her own portrait just to succeed in her fond wish to strangle that man.

Salazar grips the edge of his countertop and counts backwards from twenty in his head. Helga might not succeed if he gets to Albus Dumbledore first, and he can’t give in to that rage. Just as Salazar cannot incriminate Peter Pettigrew, he cannot yet be rid of the headmaster of Hogwarts.

“For the sake of everything the Underground intends, can you repeat this prophecy to me?”

Robert nods. “ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies._ ”

Salazar stares at him, frowning. “What of the rest of it?”

“What rest of it?” Robert looks baffled. “That’s all that Severus heard spoken.” Then he hesitates. “I’m not certain the Dark Lord noticed, distracted as he was by the prophecy, but I had the feeling that Severus found himself in the position of being unable to hear anything further. If that’s true, then he wisely said nothing of it.”

“Yes, it was.” Salazar slowly releases his grip on his own countertop, thinking. “If You-Know-Who realized Severus had failed him, he would have killed the man. It’s best if the Dark Lord believes that is the whole of it for as long as such information can possibly be withheld.”

“Then you really don’t think that’s the entire prophecy,” Robert says.

Salazar shakes his head. “Your strengthened Mind Magic training has awoken instincts that have already granted you the answer to that question.”

“It wasn’t a complete prophecy.” Robert blows out a long, shaking breath. “How can you be certain that nebulous instinct is true?"

“Cassandra’s Curse works in very specific ways. There is rhyme and repetition, and what you’ve told me of has neither. Severus overheard perhaps half of the prophecy, and that is to our advantage.” Salazar can guess at what Robert and other Death Eaters were searching for, but like Robert, he prefers certainty. “He had you all searching among magical medical records, didn’t he?”

“Everyone the Dark Lord thought had brains enough to understand them, yes,” Robert replies. “The Dark Lord wanted to know _today_. Without question, the answer had to be given to him today, or someone—maybe many of us—would die for his lack of knowing. He had to know who was pregnant and due at the end of July.”

“You must have found an answer, else you wouldn’t be here.”

Robert nods. “There were only three possibilities. Christina Fawley Bones is due the first week of August, but even I know babies don’t keep to set schedules. That one is said to be a girl, though, so the Dark Lord already discarded the notion before he was even told that Lysander and Christina don’t fit the other criteria of defiance. Alice Max Longbottom is due at the end of July…and so is Lily Evans Potter.” Robert takes another breath. “Alice Longbottom and Lily Potter are the only two, along with their spouses, who have all thrice defied the Dark Lord.”

Salazar looks at Robert, taking in his slumped shoulders and his air of defeat. He cannot. Can he?

“ _Tell him,_ ” Nizar’s portrait hisses. “ _That is his brother. That…is my uncle. Hold on, I need a moment, that was fucking weird to say._ ”

“You’re right. He deserves to know,” Salazar agrees quietly.

“Know what?” Robert asks. “And there was that noise again!”

“The noise can wait. For now, you need to know—not Lily Potter, Robert. Lily _Black_ Potter _._ ”

Robert gives him a blank stare. “Lily Black Potter. That’s…that isn’t in the records. Who is—”

“On twenty-first June of last year, I witnessed the tri-marriage of Lily Evans, James Potter and Sirius Black. They’ve kept it a secret in order to safeguard each other as best they can from the vengeance of fools.” Salazar can’t find it within him to smile. “Congratulations; you’re to be an uncle.”

Robert keeps staring at him. Then he says, “Can I have that vodka back? I need to get really drunk.”


	27. The Forest of Delamere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, Godric laughed at me when I observed that those who dwelled in Briton seemed to prefer suffering.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loving flail-back at @norcumii, and early Happy Birthday to @mrsstanley, who might still be sane but should be poked and turned occasionally to ensure the insanity bakes evenly. <3
> 
> Long-ass explanatory note and the author bitching at canon's inability to use dates, calendars, or actual math:
> 
> Book 5, Chapter 9: Moody shows Harry photographs of the original OotP. Edgar Bones, Caradoc Dearborn, and Marlene McKinnon are supposed to be in the same photograph in 1981…that James and Lily Potter & Alice and Frank Longbottom are also shown in. Except they _can’t_ be, because in 1981, the Potters and the Longbottoms are still in hiding. That means there is no way that photograph could have been taken the year canon claims, not unless the Potters and the Longbottoms dared Order meetings, death, and the loss of Harry and Neville at Voldemort’s hand just to pose for photographs. (Just...no.)
> 
> The latest that canonical photograph could have been taken in canon’s established order of events is late June/early July 1980. Since we have a movie visual in the fifth film of Lily and Alice most decidedly not 8-9 months pregnant, that (probably) nixes that idea. It’s more likely that the photograph was taken in late 1979 or early 1980, before the prophecy became a concern. (Canonically, again per book 5, the prophecy was heard in 1980, most likely in late winter/early spring, as Harry hadn't yet been born, and the weather was said to be cold and wet by the standards of an old Scottish man living in Scotland year-round.) This means Marlene and the rest of the McKinnons died after that photograph was taken, but Moody claims the McKinnons are killed two weeks after the photograph was taken, which *really* doesn’t fly if you’re trying to keep to their listed year of death as 1981. Caradoc Dearborn is also listed with a canonical date of death of 1981, dying six months after the photograph was taken, which…no. You’re still stuck with the Longbottom & Potter problem, as they would’ve been in hiding if not before the birth of Harry and Neville, then definitely right afterwards. Much like the canonical listed year of Myrtle Warren’s death, none of this holds water.
> 
> Bonus fun: Edgar Bones could actually have died at any point in the war, as he and Amelia Bones are listed as Susan Bones’s uncle and aunt, respectively, so there is still a canonically unnamed male Bones sibling (or unmarried female sibling) who had baby Susan before dying, though I believe at one point she mentions parents, plural, so in canon's narrow worldview this = male sibling. It might not even be Edgar Bones in Moody's infamous photographs, but the unnamed Bones sibling.
> 
> Alastor Moody book 5’s old OotP photographs are much like canon itself—the ultimate unreliable narrators.

If Peter Pettigrew was Marked after the slaughter of most of his family, none in the Underground witness it. He is never seen at any gathering of Voldemort’s Court; his name is never mentioned by any, not even those among the Inner Circles whose company Robert and Jewel are frequently forced to endure. None in the Order notice changes in Peter Pettigrew’s behavior, either…but those rumors of a traitor in the Order began the same week the Pettigrew Estate was attacked, its wards lowered, most of those within slain without mercy.

“ _Well, no one knew Peter was loyal to You-Know-Who,_ ” Nizar’s portrait says thoughtfully. “ _Maybe he always intended that Snape would be the obvious spy for Dumbledore to focus on, and Peter would be the…well, the rat nobody was meant to notice? And that’s_ if _Wormtail has already turned traitor, which we’re not certain of._ ”

“No, but you raise a valid point. We may never know when his treachery begins. We simply know that it is.” Salazar taps one finger on the arm of his chair, frustrated. He knows it cannot be this year that he goes to the Potter household to inform them of some rather inconvenient truths. It is next year, though he isn’t yet certain when in 1981 that shall be—earlier than Hallowe’en is the only certainty he has in that regard.

Even if Salazar wanted to rush the visit, he couldn’t yet do so, anyway. Sirius Black is unafraid to look into the eyes of old Elphias Doge, and meeting that young man’s stare is like encountering a wall of broken glass shards. His Mind Magic is much, much improved from his childhood, a blatant advisement to stay out of Sirius Black’s thoughts or suffer for it. He is very, very good, possibly good enough to keep out the likes of Albus Dumbledore.

Salazar is better. He slides between fractures of glass, and a truly vile second layer of shielding composed of the Inferi that Sirius Black has faced. That is how he discovers that Sirius Black is no longer the Secret Keeper for the Loyalty Charm on the Potter cottage in Godric’s Hollow. Albus Dumbledore has already warned the Potters of the danger of Sybill Trelawney’s prophecy, and the Longbottoms also. Frank and Alice Max Longbottom are hiding under a Loyalty Charm in the Max home that Alice inherited from her parents in Ipswich, though Sirius Black has no idea who their Secret Keeper is meant to be. Salazar suspects Augusta Longbottom. Frank’s mother might have done her best to remain neutral during this war, but she would sooner chew off her own limbs than hand a family member over to Voldemort.

There has been no formal announcement made to the Order, though, not yet. Sirius Black’s thoughts hold a hint of impatience, tempered only by the assurance that information will be granted to the others soon. Whether he likes it or not, Albus Dumbledore must speak of the prophecy and its targets. Every Death Eater in Voldemort’s Court is aware of that fucking prophecy. This is a secret that will not be kept.

“The switch has already happened.” Salazar throws himself into his own armchair and considers the notion of sulking. “I gained the impression that James and Frank may not stay under the protection of their Loyalty Charms at all times, not until after their sons are born, but Lily and Alice are under orders to stay put. I doubt either appreciates the notion.”

Nizar’s portrait makes a face. “ _Now? I realize the Death Eaters are aware, but it’s only bloody February!_ _I was always under the impression that my parents hid later, not sooner._ ”

“We can likely blame Albus Dumbledore for that.”

“ _Probably,_ ” Nizar agrees. “ _My father and Frank Longbottom—they wouldn’t leave my mother and Alice alone under normal circumstances_.”

“No. I suspect the Order is suffering from this war just as much as the Ministry and the M.L.E. They’re just doing a better job of hiding it,” Salazar says. “A certain rat has also developed the habit of avoiding the eyes of everyone but the close friends who would never suspect him of treachery.” Salazar spent a frustrating hour as Edgar Doge today, Elphias Doge’s son. It had been an attempt to convince Peter Pettigrew to at least bloody well _look_ at him during a mind-numbing conversation, but the rat wouldn’t be led. “Oh, and given her sudden silence, I believe that Amy Malden is Alice Longbottom.”

Nizar whistles. “ _Neville’s mum is a badass. I wonder how she got involved?_ ”

“I’ve no idea.” Trinity or Desdemona would know, but they do not discuss such things for a reason. The rest of the Underground will be intelligent enough to figure this out on their own, especially when Amy’s death isn’t announced. “Alice isn’t the only one working for both the Order and the Underground, though two of the five are believed deceased.” He now knows all of their identities but for Lisa Hornbeak, even if he’s not confessed that knowledge to anyone else. Not even Nizar’s portrait knows the real names of any of these members but for Alice.

Amy Malden will have to choose a new name upon her return to the Underground. Salazar has no idea if she’ll be granted time and opportunity to do so.

“ _Everyone still believes Sirius Black to be the Secret Keeper, though_ ,” Nizar says.

Salazar nods. “I imagine he’ll be loud about it once the news is official. Harfang is going to act as the vocal Secret Keeper for his grandson’s household.” Both Secret Keepers will be false. Only one of the true Secret Keepers will honor their promise.

Peter Pettigrew might have gained proficiency in avoiding the eyes of others, but Salazar doubts there is any improvement in his Mind Magic. He worries that the task of Secret Keeper was given to such a man, not because he will be suspected, but because Albus Dumbledore has no qualms about prying into the minds of others whenever it suits him.

Robert’s shoulders are now always taut lines of tension when he visits. “My brother and I might not be on speaking terms, but I saw how he was with James Potter, and how Potter and Evans acted around each other in their seventh year. If they’re hiding a tri-marriage, then Sirius will tell everyone he’s the baby’s godparent, or I’ll eat one of Lucius Malfoy’s ridiculous canes.”

“That does seem likely.” Salazar and Nizar certainly don’t know enough to be able to say otherwise. Remus Lupin is an obvious choice for a true godparent, but the young man has such a miserable time coping with being an “evil” werewolf that he might refuse. Both Nizar’s portrait and Salazar hope that if Peter Pettigrew is asked to be a godparent, he refuses and points out someone else for the task.

Robert snorts. “If what you’ve said about the Dark Lord being a Half-blood is true—”

“It _is_ true, you ridiculous twit.”

“—then he’ll go after the Half-blood child. I might not want to bow before that bastard any longer, but in so many ways, the Dark Lord thinks like a Pure-blood. He has the arrogance to see a reflection of his Half-blood status in my brother’s child, and won’t be able to resist that similarity to himself. He’ll think it’s _prophesized,_ ” Robert emphasizes snidely. “I’m glad for the safety of the Longbottom Heir, but the Dark Lord is going after my family. It will be my nephew in danger from the moment he takes his first breath.”

 _I know_ , Salazar thinks in resignation, but says nothing. It isn’t necessary to do so.

The next time Salazar slips into an Order meeting, held in the sprawling maze of buildings the McKinnon Clan refers to as home, he is again Elphias Doge rather than his more sober-minded son…and one of only three in attendance aside from Albus Dumbledore. “Do you know what is going on?” Salazar asks in Doge’s precise RP the moment Albus Dumbledore steps out of the room for _a brief moment_. Gods, Salazar hates this accent, but as of this century, he’s well-practiced.

Alastor Moody shakes his head. “No idea. Dumbledore asked to meet, but he didn’t say it was to be this sort of meeting.”

“Secrets within secrets,” Salazar says in realization. “I see.”

“I bloody well hate it,” Caradoc Dearborn mutters. “Things like this don’t help those rumors any.”

“The rumors are codswallop,” Alastor Moody retorts. “Get over it, man.”

“I’m not the one with the twitchy wand, Alastor.”

“Gentlemen, please.” Albus Dumbledore returns…followed by Severus Snape. “I need to introduce our guest—”

“Bloody _Death Eater!_ ” Alastor Moody yells in outrage, drawing his wand.

“For God’s sake, stop that idiot!” Salazar shouts.

Caradoc Dearborn reacts like the seasoned war veteran he’s become and launches himself at Moody. The red hex flies off-course and takes a chunk out of the wall near to Severus Snape’s head.

“Alastor, please,” Albus Dumbledore chides, as if the Auror is a misbehaving child.

Severus Snape, for his part, had sense enough to duck aside, but otherwise looks entirely unruffled. He does, however, glare at Albus Dumbledore. “I did tell you this was a daft idea.”

“It is a _necessary_ daft idea, then,” Albus Dumbledore replies. He ignores Severus Snape when the young man rolls his eyes in disgust. “Alastor, I would thank you not to murder the first spy we’ve successfully gained who is not only an important part of the Dark Lord’s Court, but within his Inner Circle.”

“Circles. Three of them. Ranked,” Severus Snape says in a dry voice. He also ignores Albus Dumbledore’s invitation to take a seat. For that matter, so does everyone else. “And if you had any idea how _dull_ it is to listen to that man drone on, you wouldn’t even ask if I enjoyed the position,” he adds, directing that comment at Alastor Moody.

“You had to have earned your way into that sort of position somehow,” Alastor Moody snarls. Caradoc Dearborn sighs and looks as if he’s a moment away from snatching his fellow Auror’s wand.

“Without intending to? Yes. I gave him the honest, asked-for opinion that if the Dark Lord continued to murder all of the Pure-blood families in Britain, his Pure-blood followers would eventually realize they were running out of people to marry who were of _proper_ blood, and likely wouldn’t be happy about it. Idiots.”

Salazar watches the conversation, intrigued. Like Peter Pettigrew, Severus Snape is skilled at not allowing others to meet his eyes. Unlike the rat, Severus Snape makes it seem entirely unintentional. “Just that, and you went from no circle to a place in one of these _ranked_ circles?” It’s the sort of question Elphias Doge would ask, thinking on the politics of the situation.

Severus Snape’s gaze sweeps by him so fast there is no chance to glimpse his thoughts, even were they not shielded against intruders. “Among other things, yes. Unfortunately.”

Alastor Moody finally deigns to put his wand away, if only because he’s the only one who still holds one. “What prompted you to be off and away from _him_ , then?”

“No one with the Dark Mark can truly be off and away from _him_ ,” Severus Snape says in sharp mockery. “He can kill anyone who has it by…reaching out, or however he does it. I’m certain I don’t want to know, just as I’m certain I’d prefer not to fucking well die that way. I’ve seen it happen. I’d rather be taken out by the Killing Curse.”

Caradoc Dearborn looks sympathetic, and a bit queasy. “It’s still a good question, though.”

“It is,” Severus Snape acknowledges. “I’m here because there are two families now endangered by the Dark Lord’s obsession to never be defeated, especially not after his defeat was prophesized to be brought about by an infant due in July.”

“Due in July—shit,” Caradoc Dearborn realizes. “Lily and Alice.”

“I would suggest Alice Longbottom not come out from hiding, but the Dark Lord already made his decision,” Severus Snape says. “The Potters.”

“Ah.” Alastor Moody’s grin is smug and cruel. “Out to protect the old girlfriend.”

The expression on Severus Snape’s face in response to that is quite the sight. “So much for the famous Auror and his insight,” he drawls.

“Friends, Alastor,” Albus Dumbledore says quellingly. “But a Slytherin does not discard a friend lightly, no matter the circumstances.”

Severus Snape gives Albus Dumbledore such a vicious glare, Salazar is honestly surprised the headmaster doesn’t drop dead of it. “The other reason is no doubt selfish in your eyes: survival. I’ve been trying to find a way out from that madman’s Court for quite some time now. This was the first time a solution presented itself that seemed worth the risk.”

 _FUCK!_ Salazar yells in his own head. Gods, now he is cursing Severus Snape’s excellent mental shielding. If only they had bloody well known!

“That’s not selfish to me, mate,” Caradoc Dearborn says. “That’s fuckin’ sensible. You’ll have to go back and forth, won’t you?”

Severus Snape gives Caradoc Dearborn a closer inspection, and seems to approve of what he finds. “And most of the Order will believe I’m a spy working against them…though rumor is that you already have one of those.”

“Just. Rumor,” Alastor Moody seethes.

“For their sake, I hope so,” Severus Snape says in a mild tone, which just seems to anger Alastor Moody even more. Salazar would laugh if it wouldn’t be exceptionally out of character.

“The three of you are here because this war requires insurance,” Albus Dumbledore interrupts before Alastor Moody decides to further this particular pissing match into more flying chunks of masonry. “If anything happens to me, you are all respected members of Wizarding Britain from differing walks of life.”

 _Pure-blood, Half-blood, Muggle-born,_ Salazar translates, frowning.

“Severus is not only going to be reporting to me. He is also going to convince the Dark Lord that he is, in fact, a double agent, here to spy on the Order of the Phoenix.”

“Oi, I don’t envy you, mate,” Caradoc Dearborn says at once, wide-eyed. “Not a damned bit!”

“Wise of you,” Severus Snape mutters.

“That gives you a reason to be here that he would not suspect.” Salazar makes himself meet Albus Dumbledore’s eyes, glad that Elphias Doge is a Pure-blood raised with excellent Occlumency skills…and a trusted friend of the Dumbledore family. “That is dangerous.”

“No more dangerous than existing anywhere near the Dark Lord,” Severus Snape interjects. “Of late, he’s been…tetchy.”

“Tetchy. Heh,” Alastor Moody huffs.

Severus Snape raises an eyebrow and addresses Alastor Moody while seemingly also disregarding him entirely. “Do you enjoy being tortured with the Cruciatus Curse? I’m afraid I’m not as fond of it as you seem to be.”

Alastor Moody glares back. “Well-played,” he admits, and then stomps his way out of the room.

“ _That’s that question answered, then,_ ” Nizar’s portrait hisses once Salazar is home from returning certain memories to Elphias Doge’s unconscious head. “ _A spy now, not a spy always._ ”

“He claims to have been looking for a way out for a while now. I believe him. Lily Black Potter’s endangerment was simply the means to overcome his valid fears of immediate and painful death.”

“ _Are you going to approach him about the Underground?_ ” Nizar asks.

“I thought on it just long enough to receive a stern kicking,” Salazar replies. “For now, Severus Snape has as different path to walk than ours, though I’d rather he were not walking it with only Albus Dumbledore for company.”

“ _Nobody should be forced to endure that man’s company on their own. Shit happens when you spend too much time with that manipulative fuckstick._ ”

Salazar eyes his brother’s portrait for being exceptionally correct. “Elphias Doge, Alastor Moody, and Caradoc Dearborn are meant to be Severus Snape’s insurance against Azkaban at the conclusion of the war. I wonder if he insisted upon such a thing, or if Albus Dumbledore had a moment of thoughtfulness for someone who is not himself.”

“ _Really doubt it was Dumbledore, Sal._ ”

“So do I,” Salazar admits. “I really need to have a look at Severus Snape’s shielding.”

“ _Then ask someone Snape trusts not to be anything more than who they appear to be,_ ” Nizar says. “ _Honestly, the answer keeps visiting you, and you keep overlooking it. It’s annoying._ ”

“Robert.” Salazar closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Of course. _Little brother, I think I’m exhausted._ ”

“ _You were exhausted in 1971, idiot. After this, you have to step back for a while. You have to. You’re going to slip if you don’t._ ”

Salazar thinks on how much worse the war has become as the years crawl on. If Voldemort is now _tetchy_ , then they’ve not yet seen how horrific the Dark Lord can be. “Twenty months and two weeks from now, little brother. That’s when I will rest.”

Salazar should know better than to make those sorts of plans by now. This century has proven its intent to fuck with him in every fashion imaginable, plus a few others that should never have been conceived of at all.

He doesn’t sleep, which sets Nizar’s portrait to glaring at him on the regular, but he can’t. He has tried, and he _can’t_. Time weighs down on him like a press, seconds tick by in his thoughts, and in four months and two weeks his little brother is going to be in two places at once. When his thoughts grant him relief from that concern, they taunt him instead with the deaths he failed to prevent.

Salazar distracts himself by going out into the Muggle world. He lingers long enough to discover that most of England is in some way furious with the current Conservative government, led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

“Weren’t you just the Leader of the Opposition?” Salazar wonders aloud, trying to answer that question with a series of newspapers and magazines he purchased before returning home. “When the hell did I miss the election? Oh, you’re against Scottish home rule. I imagine they hate you, too. And the Welsh? You angered the Welsh? I’m almost impressed. Oh—you got in by way of a vote of no confidence? What the absolute bloody hell? And here I’ve been convinced that the Ministry of Magic’s handling of the 1970s was the worst form of governing this isle could produce. I’m as in favor of a woman leading a nation as any other sensible being, but why _you?_ Oh, you don’t like Asians, and no social assistance for those in need—gods, woman, there is already a Dark Lord trying to destroy Britain, and he did not need your assistance!”

Nizar is lying on the floor of his portrait, wheezing with laughter. “ _Even I know who the Iron Lady is, Sal. You’ll love her. She manages to get re-elected. More than once._ ”

“You know, Godric laughed at me when I observed that those who dwelled in Briton seemed to prefer suffering.”

Nizar makes another desperate wheezing sound. “ _Probably because he knew you were correct._ ”

Augustine Travers has not yet let up with his drinking, though the other members of the Underground prefer not to use him if they can avoid it. Several understand themselves well enough to recognize that their drinking might not be so feigned; others are unaccustomed to being that short; the women tend not to want to disguise themselves as men because of the extra parts involved.

On fourteenth March, Salazar arrives at the Carrow Estate as Augustine Travers and is immediately informed that he is late for a meeting. Salazar swears under his breath in the manner typical to his borrowed guise. There had been no messages regarding meetings, and no thoughts in Augustine Travers’s head about it, either. “What meeting?” he asks Felix Macnair, who looks far too pleased to be delivering the message.

“Our Dark Lord wishes for you to meet Madam Bole and Evan Rosier at one of the usual Apparition points in Delamere Forest.” Felix Macnair makes little shooing motions with his hands. “Off with you now.”

Salazar narrows his eyes. “Do not forget your place, Felix,” he says. “There is a reason you linger in the Third Circle of our Lord’s most loyal followers.”

“And there is a reason why you linger in the Second,” Felix responds, smirking. “I wouldn’t want to be late to meet with someone who definitely outranks us both. Would you?”

“Evan Rosier is only of the Innermost Circle because William Montague could not keep his idiotic mouth shut,” Salazar retorts, spinning on his heel. He wobbles for the show of it, which causes Felix Macnair to let out an ugly laugh. “I’ll kill you later,” Salazar mutters, and Apparates before the other has a chance to take those words as threat or promise. It is most certainly both.

Salazar arrives to find Evan Rosier Junior and Hillaria Bole laughing at a body on the ground. “I didn’t realize this meeting was about cleaning up messes.”

Hillaria Bole sees him and smiles, her mask discarded. “Augustine! Do join us. We caught a little Phoenix, and he still has enough life left in him for you to take a turn, if you like.”

Salazar retrieves his wand with an easy, casual motion. That is Caradoc Dearborn on the ground between them, and he looks to be in a bad way already. “Of course,” he says, and then Confounds Hillaria Bole and Evan Rosier before they recognize what’s happening. A branch snaps behind him; Salazar whirls and sends off a spell that collides with the first inbound bit of sickly yellow magic. It seems Bole and Rosier were not alone.

There is no time for words. He has to defeat Willow Doge Munslow so he can see to Caradoc Dearborn, and hope it’s not too late in the meantime.

“Traitor!” Willow Munslow yells. “Else you would have helped Hillaria and Evan instead of hexing them!”

“Oh, fuck off!” Salazar yells back, knocking her off balance by rupturing the earth beneath her feet. Willow Munslow responds by flinging the Killing Curse at him.

Salazar drops down into the dirt next to Caradoc Dearborn so the curse will pass over them both. He rolls over and finds Willow Munslow’s black cloak, which she believes hides her in the forest darkness, and lets loose with a blasting hex.

It’s too powerful, too much. Salazar truly didn’t intend it to be, but the result is unavoidable. Willow Munslow doesn’t shield in time and dies in messy, permanent fashion.

“Fuck,” Salazar whispers. He doesn’t regret the death of Edgar Doge’s sister, given that she’d just tried to bloody well kill him, but the other Doges are good people. They at least deserved to have a body to bury, even if it was a Death Eater’s body.

Salazar rolls over and finds Caradoc Dearborn awake, staring at him as if he truly believes he’s going to be next. “My apologies. I don’t have time to convince you that I am not your enemy right now.” He stands up, ignoring a sharp twinge on his left side, and uses a levitation charm to collect Caradoc Dearborn. Then he convinces Evan Rosier Junior that he completed his favorite sport of turning his enemies to pieces, grants both Death Eaters the sight of Willow Munslow’s remains to help reinforce the new memory, and sends Rosier and Bole on their way.

Caradoc Dearborn still appears convinced that he is about to die. Salazar rolls his eyes and Apparates them both to Trinity’s home in Lambeth, arriving in her sitting room. “Trinity! I hope you’re in the mood to deal with blood, because this man is leaking plenty of it!”

Trinity approaches from her kitchen, using her braced crutches today instead of her chair. “Not on the blasted rug—is that Caradoc Dearborn?” she yelps in angry surprise.

“It is, and I’ve no idea how he managed to stumble upon two Death Eaters tonight. I was sent to meet them without being told they weren’t alone. Willow Munslow is dead, if anyone wishes to know.”

Trinity rolls her eyes. “Put Caradoc on the sofa,” she orders after expanding it. “We’re going to need Jewel for this, and Sarah.” She frowns as she takes in Caradoc Dearborn’s ashen dark skin. “Caradoc needs St. Mungo’s. Which of you am I dealing with, by the way? You still look to be Travers.”

“Saul.” He hopes the bloody Multa Facies Sucus wears off soon. “There are two Death Eaters who are convinced that Caradoc Dearborn is dead, Trinity.” He finds a convenient wall to lean against, suddenly bloody exhausted. “For now, that keeps him safe, whereas St. Mungo’s might see him executed. Besides that, I’ve heard it said by both sides that St. Mungo’s is overwhelmed. Caradoc Dearborn might die while awaiting treatment.”

“True, that’s—Saul.” Trinity points at him with her wand while leaning one of her crutches against the table. “You’re staining my wall.”

“I’m what?” Salazar touches his side, where he felt that earlier twinge, and finds damp cloth. His fingertips come away stained with red. “That’s his blood, not mine.”

Trinity doesn’t sound impressed. “You might wish to reconsider that opinion.” At least she is considerate enough to pad the landing when Salazar passes out.

* * * *

Frank and Peter were able to go home at once, but James hasn’t yet left the last standing Westenberg household. He’s still slumped down in a cozy armchair, nursing a glass of some of the absolute _worst_ whiskey he thinks he’s ever encountered, provided by Alastor Moody. The man’s Irish; you’d think he would have better taste.

James is also taking the opportunity to argue with Sirius about asking Remus to be his son’s godfather, but that is wisely being done beneath a privacy charm. Besides, it’s less an argument and more plotting on how to convince a shit-stubborn werewolf that _yes_ , James, Lily, and Sirius really do want to stick him with the job.

“Arthur’s still not back?” Ted Tonks asks, dragging himself in from what looks to have been one hell of a night out in the northern woods. Either that, or his kid is up to some serious Metamorphmagus shenanigans again. The Marauders as a whole adore Nymphadora, who has already decided that her name is _Tonks_. “I thought he would be.”

“No, unfortunately not,” Elphin Urquhart tells him. James is still getting used to thinking of him that way, but a Finn Urquhart joined up with the Death Eaters, and Minerva’s husband wants to avoid any potential confusion or accidental death.

It’s still bloody fucking odd to think of Professor McGonagall as Minerva—she threatened him into it, or James would still be calling her Professor—and her being married just adds to that. If Minerva and Elphin have kids, James is going to lie down somewhere and stare up at the sky in complete bewilderment. He’s pretty sure he could handle Albus suddenly turning up with a spouse and kids a lot better than his own former Head of House.

“Arthur is still at St. Mungo’s with Molly,” Elphin says, handing Ted a tumbler of Alastor’s awful whiskey. “Minerva is visiting with them, but I think m’wife has ulterior motives. She wants her turn at watching over the new wee bairn.”

James winces and glances at Sirius, who looks just as unhappy. It was bad enough when Bill Weasley died in battle in February. That left Arthur the last man standing out of his brothers, and none of us his uncles left, either. Septimus Weasley has been a complete bloody mess. Cedrella is doing a bit better, but as Sirius pointed out—she’s a Black. Grief isn’t going to stop her from avenging her son.

Arthur’s cousin Arnice Weasley and his wife Ginevra Marchbanks, along with their daughter Priscilla, are all still alive, but they’re involved in the Order, too. That’s left Septimus and Arthur both quietly panicking that You-Know-Who’s people are going to wipe out the Weasley family name. Then Molly had to go to St. Mungo’s because of labor complications, and Arthur really _did_ panic, thinking he was going to lose his wife and the baby in one go. They both made it, thank Merlin, and Arthur’s son, Ronald Bilius Weasley, is named for the uncle who’d been so excited about the birth of his sixth nephew.

James really hopes they call that kid something shorter, maybe something like Ron. Going around saying Ronald Bilius all the time is a mouthful, and James’s dad would’ve been the first to say so.

Shit. He didn’t want to think about that. Dad would be out there with Cedrella, hunting down the Death Eater who cursed Bilius Weasley in the back when the battle was supposed to have been over and done with. They all expect the enemy to cheat, but it was one of those rare stalemates when the spells had stopped flying around five minutes previous. Almost everyone had already Disapparated to go…wherever it was a Death Eater went just after a battle.

He’s trying not to think about Lily and _labor complications_ , too. Lily isn’t worried, but James is a Pure-blood from a long line of Pure-bloods who’ve had some interesting birthing experiences, and that’s a boy of Potter blood she’s carrying. Lily keeps retorting that she’s _not_ a Pure-blood, not even close, and can he please knock off with fretting over her like she’s a fragile piece of china? James will back off just long enough for Sirius to take over, which is probably not helping.

“You’ve got those pictures developed now?” Hagrid says, catching James’s attention. “I always did want to have a look.”

Alastor is holding a handful of new wizarding photographs. James winces just thinking about them. They were taken in December and January, and some of those people are dead now.

He kind of hates that Alastor didn’t think about taking photographs of the Order earlier. Holding off for so long means Dad isn’t going to be in any of them, and Dad was here at the start. Who’s going to remember that in twenty years? Even James noticed before he graduated Hogwarts that wizards have notoriously short memories.

“Yeah, I do. There’s the Potters, a few Blacks, Pettigrew, Diggle, Elphias and Edgar Doge, the Longbottoms, Edgar Bones—”

Lysander sits up from where he’s been lying on the couch in an exhausted contemplation of the ceiling, glaring at Alastor. “That’s me, you tit! Edgar died in 1973!”

Alastor pauses, frowning over the photograph, before he glances at Lysander. “Right, sorry, yeah. I keep forgetting how much you look like him, is all.”

Lysander rolls his eyes and flops back down. “Edgar wasn’t married to Christina, either,” he mutters.

James realizes he can’t remember who Edgar Bones was married to, and is hit with an immediate pang of guilt. He doesn’t dare ask Lysander, especially not after what Alastor just pulled, because that’s to imply the Bones family is being forgotten. It would be the same in reverse; Lysander isn’t going to ask James what his grandparents’ names were, even if he forgot them. You ask someone else, or dig up a Pure-blood genealogy guide, or find another way around, especially now. Too many of Wizarding Britain’s magical families are gone.

Sturgis Podmore, who is only eighteen and still manages to look like an _infant_ compared to how James feels, enters the room with a frown on his face. “Hey, James. You and Peter were with Caradoc Dearborn tonight, yeah?”

James feels an immediate cold chill crawl down his spine. Sirius quietly ditches their privacy charm. “Yeah. Why?”

“Well, Mr. Westenberg was saying Caradoc should’ve been back by now, only he’s not. Neither is Dorcas Meadows.”

“Shit!” James launches himself out of his chair, followed by Sirius. Lysander struggles to his feet as Alastor comes stomping after them, while Elphin swears in Scots Gaelic with enough emphasis that Minerva might’ve blushed and told him off.

They find Charles Westenberg in the kitchen, peering over a map of England with his wife, Elsie Corner. James overheard Charles once say to Dad that the only reason the Death Eaters left them alone after killing the other Westenbergs was because Charles is only a Half-blood. He married a Pure-blood with a nutter Death Eater family, yes, which might’ve gained him favor in their eyes, but largely, Charles believes they were spared because he and his wife are too old to have children. When they die, the magical Westenbergs really are gone for good. Another branch of James’s family, tied to him in blood through his great-grandmother: extinct.

Damn this stupid war.

“Anything?” Sirius asks, dropping into his Steely Auror voice. James knows his husband; Sirius isn’t even aware that he ever does it. It makes Remus smile, and Peter will make faces behind Sirius’s back, but Sirius is a Black. Steely intimidation does the job, and Lucretia Black Prewett bloody well loves it.

“Nothing,” Elsie replies, shaking her head. “Caradoc’s name is still at that old Apparition point where the three of you met up tonight after your spying rounds, which…”

“Isn’t good. That was several hours ago now,” Charles says.

“He could’ve dropped the charm,” Elphin suggests, but even he doesn’t look convinced. Nobody in the Order just _drops_ the charm that means they can be found if something goes wrong.

Charles hesitates. “Dorcas, though, she’s…” He gives up and points.

James looks at the map and the list next to it, sees the location floating next to Dorcas Meadows’s name, and feels himself blanch. “Oh, God.”

“The Avery Estate,” Sturgis whispers. “That’s where You-Know-Who is rumored to be tonight.”

“Captured.” Lysander swallows. “I’m so glad Christina isn’t here right now.”

“I’ll go—” James tries to say, but Alastor cuts him off.

“None of you’ll do a bloody thing unless I say you do it,” Alastor barks, scowling. “I’m the senior man here right now, and you, Potter, have already spent half the day and night running around the countryside. Your arse is staying here. You, too, Black, as I expect you to bloody well sit on him if he tries to scarper. No one’s to go to the Avery Estate. We don’t have the means to get in, and neither does anyone else. We hope the map’s wrong, or that they…” Alastor pauses, expression grim.

 _We hope the Death Eaters give us back her body_ , James interprets. Not that they ever do.

“Podmore, you’re with me, off to that Apparition point in Delamere Forest,” Alastor continues. “We’ll round up young Doge and Vance; they’ll drop in a minute after us, just in case.”

They all wait in grim, expectant silence. Minerva returns from St. Mungo’s in the company of Septimus and Cedrella Weasley. Arthur is staying overnight with Molly and the baby, though it now looks as if Molly and Ronald will be sent home in the morning. Elphias Doge holds his drink with an unsteady hand despite the fact that he’s nowhere near soused, waiting for his son to come back. With his daughter among the Death Eaters, James really gets why Elphias is so nervous. Hagrid paces the kitchen with heavy, echoing steps until Ted convinces him to take a magically reinforced seat. Andromeda arrives a few minutes afterward, a snoozing Tonks slung over her shoulder. She goes straight to Ted, taking hold of his hand.

Dedalus Diggle lets out a soft moan of dismay when Dorcas Meadows’s name disappears from the list attached to the map two hours after midnight. Sirius swears viciously—if quietly, so Andromeda doesn’t jinx him—and sends off his Patronus to let Frank and Alice know what’s happened. Just destroying the charm won’t wipe their names away. Only death will do that.

“Another memorial stone,” Remus murmurs, and James startles in surprise. He has no idea when Remus turned up, but he’s behind James and Sirius, his exhaustion more evident than ever. There are going to be two full moons this month, and the first already hit him so hard James doubts he’ll have recovered before number two comes along. “Her family deserves better.”

“So did Dorcas,” Andromeda replies, and then sighs when Caradoc Dearborn’s name vanishes, too. “God, not both of them. Not in a single night.”

James reaches out to grip Sirius and Remus’s hands. Sirius rests his head on James’s shoulder. Remus stands close and clings hard, but none of them say a word. There isn’t really anything they can say, not until they’re saying it to Caradoc’s family.

Alastor returns around a quarter of three in the morning, followed by a green-faced Sturgis Podmore. James doesn’t need to hear the words to know what’s happened, but he stays.

“Caradoc’s gone, and I’m being literal,” Alastor announces quietly. “Looks like he took another one with him while he had the chance, but there isn’t enough left of either of them to bury.”

“Dammit,” Lysander hisses, then covers his mouth with one hand and bends over, his breath hitching. Andromeda passes bitty Tonks off to her father and goes to see to Lysander.

Sirius trades glances with James. Caradoc was sponsoring one of the newer Aurors, a pairing that had quickly become a deep friendship. “Kingsley’s going to lose his shit,” Sirius mutters. Shacklebolt had already lost both of his parents to Death Eaters before he graduated Hogwarts. This isn’t going to help a damned thing.

“A lot of people are.” Alastor looks at Elphias, his expression even grimmer than usual. “We know who the other Death Eater was. Must’ve been one hell of a Blasting Hex that sent her off, too.”

Elphias sits down hard on one of Charles and Elsie’s kitchen chairs, as if gravity was too much to fight any longer. “Willow?”

Sturgis makes a gagging sound and bolts for the door, hurling himself out into the back garden before he sicks up. “Yeah,” Alastor replies, inclining his head at Elphias. “Willow Doge Munslow. I’m sorry, Elphias.”

“It’s not your doing, Alastor,” Elphias replies, setting his glass down after alcohol spills over the side. “I’m…I worried I would never know what became of her because of this war, actually.” He sniffs hard and lifts his chin. “Caradoc’s been one of our best for a long time now. She should have known better, but—thank you. Thank you for telling me. I’m glad it was you.”

“Is there anything else that can be done?” James finds himself asking.

Alastor shakes his head. “Just go home. You’ve got a wife waiting, and Lily’ll want to hear about this. In fact, that goes for all of you. If you’ve already put in a full shift, go. I’ll be sending word to Albus.”

James drags Sirius and Remus out of the house with him, and then glances at Sirius. “Do you have it?”

“Yeah. Peter isn’t going to keep it away from me and Remus until after the munchkin is born,” Sirius murmurs.

“I should go—”

“No, you should fucking well stay,” James retorts, and then Apparates all three of them before Remus can voice any more stupid protests. It takes two more Apparitions before they all land on the walkway in front of the cottage in Godric’s Hollow. “You need a rest, too, Moony.”

“Since I’ve already been kidnapped…” Remus sighs and follows them inside after James unlocks the door.

Lily listens to the news about Caradoc and Dorcas, and then wraps her arms around James. “No more,” she whispers in his ear, fierce and angry. “Sirius is already playing at being a target, all but waving his bum in the air for a Death Eater to tag. Your arse is staying right here with me until the baby is born, and then until after the war is over, and just— _no more_ , James Potter. It could just as easily have been you tonight instead of Caradoc. No more. I might lose Sirius because of the war or because of fucking Bellatrix Black, and I’ve accepted that, but I can’t lose you both.”

“Okay.” James swallows, feeling the swell of Lily’s pregnant stomach firm against his waist. “You’ve got me. I’ll stay.” Lily’s arms tighten around him in relief.

Then the baby kicks.

James steps back and stares down at Lily’s stomach. “Wait. Was that—”

Lily has tears streaming down her face, but she rests her hand on her stomach and smiles. “That was the first time! I think someone else is trying to tell Dad Potter to stay put.”

Sirius rushes over and places both hands on Lily’s stomach. “Where where where where!” he blurts out in excitement. Lily moves his hand to the appropriate spot; a moment later, Sirius breaks into a broad grin. “Not the day I would’ve chosen for it, but thanks, sprout, for giving us something better than what…what…just. Oh, fuck, Lily,” Sirius whispers, and Lily envelops Sirius in a hug.

Lily convinces Remus to sleep on the sofa overnight, which means she can pounce on him with the Godfather Conversation over breakfast. James hides a smile with his coffee mug; the poor bastard never stood a chance.

“Yes, we still want you to be our child’s godfather.” Lily rolls her eyes when Remus makes a panicked, garbled sound of protest. “Maybe we’ll even want it for all of our children, but definitely this one, Remus.”

“Moony,” Sirius looks at Remus, all hint of humor gone from his face. “We can pretend all we like that I’m my own son’s godfather until the war is done, but he still needs a real one. We want it to be you.”

“What about Peter?” Remus asks in desperation. “He’s a Marauder, too.”

“Dad wanted it to be you,” James says, which makes Lily and Sirius glance at him in surprise. “It’s the truth. We were talking about kids before the wedding, and Dad said if I was going to ask any of my friends to be a godparent to my first child, he’d choose you over them all. Are you going to disrespect my dad and say he was wrong, Moony?”

Remus is stubborn enough to do just that, but at least he avoids the implied insult. “I know the family knew about me being a werewolf because of the cousins bit, which Gran still finds hilarious, but when your grandparents and parents were alive, it was different, James. They had the reputation to withstand this sort of thing. Nobody would say a damned thing if they were still around and it got out that you chose a werewolf for a godparent.”

“Nobody knows you’re a werewolf except for my wife, my husband, and Peter,” Sirius points out. “Well, and Snape, but…”

“Trust me, if Severus was going to out you, Remus, it would’ve happened when we were all still in Hogwarts,” Lily says firmly. “He didn’t tell anyone then, _including me_ , and he isn’t going to do that now. Not when Severus has been a spy for the Order this entire time.”

James kind of doubts that, though if anyone asked, he’d never be able to say why. Sirius came home with the news that Dumbledore had introduced Snape to the Order of the Phoenix, saying he’d been a spy on their side all along. He’d added a lot of foul language to the announcement, but Remus and Peter had witnessed the meeting, too, confirming all of it.

The first thing Snape had done, aside from look pissed off about everything, was to toss his Death Eater’s cloak and a plain, darkened silver mask down on the table. He told the entire Order to get a good, magical look, because those items were the reason so many of their hexes and jinxes failed to put a Death Eater down on the ground. Even Sirius had to admit that learning how to get around the powerful protections in those cloaks and masks had immediately given the Order and the M.L.E. an advantage on the field that they’d been lacking for the entire fucking war.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter; Lily cried with relief when Sirius told them. Their wife didn’t have many friends as a kid aside from Mary MacDonald, and James won’t take another one from her. Even if Snape wasn’t always Albus Dumbledore’s man, he sure is now.

James has tried to keep thinking about the Order politically, like his dad always insisted. He could see at once why Albus would claim that Snape was always their spy. They need the morale boost, definitely. Knowing they’ve got insight into You-Know-Who’s bullshit was an immediate pick-me-up for a lot of the Order, even if Alastor hates Snape more than Sirius does—which is kind of impressive. The war isn’t going well, and anyone with a working brain in their head can see it. The prophecy of You-Know-Who’s defeat is helping to hold people together; that and the spy bit will help keep the Order from collapsing in despair after they have funerals for Dorcas and Caradoc.

He still can’t believe it. He still can’t believe they’re just _gone._ It makes James think about the rumors of a traitor again, but it was him, Caradoc, and Peter. No way in hell would Peter turn traitor.

“That’s all true, _for now_ ,” Remus emphasizes. “Look. I would love to be your son’s godfather, Lily. I’m a Marauder, and any kid of a Marauder is Pack. But it isn’t just you three and Snape who know about me, not anymore. Albus has me spying on the werewolf packs who are rumored to be allies to You-Know-Who, and it turns out that they aren’t just rumors. Those are enemies who know who I am, and what I am. Maybe no one would believe them because they’re known werewolves. Maybe they will. The important thing is that the moment it got out that I really am a werewolf, it would damage your reputations, all three of you. It might even damage your son’s reputation, and he hasn’t even been born yet! I don’t want that, not for any of my friends.”

“Moony, by the time the war is done, it won’t matter,” Sirius insists. “You’ll be a fucking war hero. It won’t matter that you’re a werewolf godparent anymore, not when we’re done kicking the arse of You-Know-Who and all of the idiots following along behind him.”

“Exactly,” James says at the same time Lily does. They look at each other and laugh, tired giggling that trails off too quickly. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re Harry’s godfather, and that’s final.”

“Harry, huh?” Lily asks, raising an eyebrow.

James blinks a few times. “I—I hadn’t actually thought about it. I just sort of spat that out. I’m sorry, we can—”

“James.” Lily rests her hand over James’s on the table, curling their fingers together. “Harry Simon Potter would be so flattered.”

Sirius wrinkles his nose. “Not Harry Simon. Harry James. This is James’s kid, not Granddad Potter.”

“Our kid, you ninny,” Lily says, rolling her eyes. “Dad One and Dad Two, remember?”

“Yeah.” Sirius’s smile is kind of daft, it’s so bashful. Handsome bastard. “We still haven’t figured out Pop, Poppa, Daddy, Dad Two, or Father—please not Father, by the way.”

“Wait until after the kid is born. Then you can worry about it. In the meantime…” Remus holds up his glass of pumpkin juice with a wry smile. “To Harry James Potter. May he be the best of all of you.”

“To my son,” James says.

“Hear fuckin’ hear,” Sirius adds, thrusting his glass into the air so quickly he nearly spills it everywhere. Lily smiles and shakes her head, telling Padfoot he has to lap up whatever mess he’s going to make in their kitchen.

James smiles when the toast is done, but for some reason, all he feels is horrible, heart-wrenching grief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, previous chapter and the prophecy: I actually included one line too many of the prophecy without intending to because of exhaustion, lack of spoons, more exhaustion, and oh, yeah, exhaustion. (Makes it hard to edit, or even see necessary edits in the first place.) 
> 
> I've written *everything* in OaLC previous to that moment as if it was just the first two lines overheard, not that third one, so this is one time that, yeah, I'm going back and removing the third line. I'm editing something out. I really don't like doing that, but I hate contradictions even more.


	28. Overseen by the Serpent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer of 1980 is one of lives lost and knowledge gained, including a further desire to strangle the life out of Albus Dumbledore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Birthday chapter from the filthy hobbittsssesssss (as in, it's mine, and I can give stuff away. Because.)
> 
> Usual flailing awesome from @norcumii!

A slicing hex. Not just any slicing hex. A _cursed_ slicing hex. Salazar loathes this fucking century.

“That would be Severus’s curse, all right,” Robert says, pulling up a chair to sit next to him. Salazar refused to remain in bed, no matter how long this takes to heal. Like the unceasing nuclear blasts of the 1950s, he is once again living on his fucking sofa.

“Severus didn’t mean for anyone to find out about it, but about a week before Willow Munslow nailed you, he had to use it to ‘accidentally’ injure a Death Eater who was about to murder my brother. Of course, Severus told the Dark Lord that he was _aiming_ for Sirius, but Patrick Rosier got in the way. Unfortunately, the curse kept going after it severed Rosier’s left hand, and now Moody _really_ hates Severus. That injury probably saved Severus from having a bad night of it, though.”

Salazar rolls his eyes up at his own ceiling. “What new body part is Alastor Moody lacking now?”

“His leg, severed at the knee. I think it’s a fine match to what Evan Rosier Senior did to that man’s nose, but what do I know? Moody wants Severus dead, so Henry Deacon says it’s business as usual for the Order. Moody only calmed down a bit when Severus was finally able to attend another Order meeting last night, tell them the full nature of the curse, and give everyone the counter-curse. Even then, there are still idiots that believe he is really on the Dark Lord’s side instead of Dumbledore’s. You’d think the Order would be capable of noticing that Severus could easily have kept that counter-curse to himself.”

“You would think,” Salazar agrees. “Though I would say it is more that Severus Snape is not on the Dark Lord’s side, but rather he is overly enjoying the company of the Order.”

“God knows he doesn’t like Dumbledore,” Robert says with a nod, but then he frowns. “Wait, I’m not thinking like a spy, am I? They don’t want the entire Order convinced. That doubt will help to keep the Dark Lord from suspecting Severus of treachery.”

Salazar smirks at him. “Now you’re thinking like a spy _and_ a Black.”

Regulus pulls a face. “Thanks. I think. You’re lucky to be alive, by the way. If that hadn’t been a glancing blow…”

“Cursed slicing hexes easily slice men in half. I know.” Salazar has seen it. He has no idea how long it would take to heal from such a thing, had that actually happened to him. “Every time wizards forget the reality of a slicing curse, someone then discerns how to cast it anew. Some things should remain forgotten.”

“Probably.” Robert grins. “By the way, don’t ever tell Sirius that Severus saved his arse. I think Severus would devote the rest of his life in pursuit of finding who revealed that he’d done so just to murder them.”

“I am not moving from this house for at least another full month,” Salazar retorts, annoyed. “I’ll not be telling Sirius Black anything, Robert.”

After Robert leaves, Nizar returns to his portrait frame in the sitting room. “ _That is now two major injuries in a single year, and it’s only March,_ ” he says quietly. “ _Now will you bloody well take a rest?_ ”

“It isn’t as if I’ve much choice in the matter.” Salazar crosses his arms. Then he uncrosses them when that gesture proves to hurt. “Shit, I forgot to ask Robert how Caradoc Dearborn was faring.”

“ _I might’ve been listening in to the household chatter while you were unconscious._ ”

“Then tell me,” Salazar all but begs. “I’d forgotten that daytime telly could be so damned dull!”

“ _You own books, idiot,_ ” Nizar responds. “ _Caradoc healed up all right. A few scars, and his joints might pain him now and then, but otherwise, he’s fine. When Caradoc was given the option of returning to the Order and proving himself alive, he chose to stay with the Underground. No hesitation at all. Monica says he’s been rechristened Karl Franklin Johnson by Muggle paperwork, but she also mentioned that she’s all but certain Caradoc stayed because he keeps looking at Trinity Sutherland like a lovestruck buffoon._ ”

“Trinity will either welcome the attention after these many years, or she’ll attempt to hex the poor man’s bollocks off.” Salazar tries to find a comfortable spot on his sofa and frowns. He knows this blasted bit of furniture was softer once, wasn’t it? He certainly spent enough time on it when nuclear blasts seemed to be a crippling daily occurrence.

Maybe he should have it replaced. No; modern furniture’s upholstery smells odd to him. He’ll have it re-stuffed, perhaps, but it certainly won’t be stuffed with foam, or whatever else Muggles are cramming into furniture these days.

“ _Do you think it was Wormtail?_ ” Nizar suddenly asks.

“Wormtail doing what? I’ve no idea what you mean.”

“ _Monica told me that Caradoc had just finished meeting my father and Wormtail in those very same woods. I’ve been wondering if it was just a chance encounter for a known, if uncommon, Apparition point, or if Peter turned Caradoc in to You-Know-Who himself._ ”

“No. It wasn’t him.” Salazar blinks a few times and shakes off the disorientation caused by a sudden burst of Divination when he is still recovering from blood loss. “I’m certain.”

“ _If it wasn’t him…then maybe he hasn’t decided on being a Death Eater yet,_ ” Nizar says. “ _Maybe he didn’t betray his family, after all._ ”

“ _Maybe not,_ ” Salazar allows. “ _I would imagine, though, that the slaughter of his family, followed shortly by the timing of Karl’s supposed death—Peter Pettigrew may well find those two events enough to convince him that the Order will lose the war. That it is better to switch sides now and avoid the fate of those like Caradoc Dearborn._ ”

“ _That does fit._ ” Nizar sounds as if he’s chewing on his thumbnail, a very rare habit he almost never indulges in, portrait or otherwise. “ _If this isn’t enough, though, I’d bet Hallowe’en this year will do it._ ”

Salazar grimaces. “Please do not remind me of that, not yet. I have seven entire months to try once again to find whoever is shattering wards, and hopefully rend them to pieces.”

“ _It would be far more efficient to just make them explode,_ ” Nizar says.

“Willow Munslow’s death was swift and merciful. I’m not much inclined towards mercy when it comes to whoever has granted You-Know-Who the means to murder so many.”

Henry Deacon stops by to keep him up to date on Order meetings, as he's now the one spending his time portraying Mundungus Fletcher on behalf of the Underground. “I just wish that man would take a fucking bath now and then,” the young man complains. “My nose is never going to forgive me.”

“Mine may not, either,” Salazar says. “How is uni going?” He wouldn’t be the sort to combine university classes with spying, but Henry is much like Nizar in that he has to be doing _something_ with his time, all the time, or it drives him up a bloody wall.

“It’s…going,” Henry replies, brow furrowing. “I thought studying Muggle politics would be simple, but they make the Wizengamot look like uneducated idiots with how twisty they’ve made things. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just isn’t what I expected. Also, I’ll admit it now; my Hogwarts education for anything not related to magic is shit. I’m barely comprehending what’s going on in my English studies or maths classes. It’s my mastery of the Magical Spoken Word that’s kept those professors sympathetic instead of outraged, and I don’t blame them for the outrage at all.”

“It will get better. Pick up a few secondary schooling texts for both subjects. Reading at a lower educational level might be frustrating, but you’ll learn the basics you’re missing faster than trying to force them through your head at uni level,” Salazar suggests. Henry nods, but he looks doubtful. If the man wants to torture himself by doing things the hard way, so be it. “How is the family?”

Henry scowls. “Oh, the infamous Derrick family. I want to strangle them all.”

“That bad, is it?”

“Allan Blishwick is a raging arsehole, which you are already aware of, and if I’d still been considered alive, I would have staked him through the heart and shoved him from a cliff rather than let our sister marry that piece of filth,” Henry seethes. “They just had a daughter. I’m not certain if I’m glad that my sister will be able to have more children, or if I’m certain the world has enough raging arsehole Blishwicks in it already. Thank Merlin that Oderick isn’t bloody interested in marrying, because I know he’d choose a spouse just as awful as Blishwick.”

Salazar smiles in sympathy. “What of young Peregrine, then? He’s two years of age, is he not?”

Henry shakes his head. “No, not until the end of June. Peregrine is a good boy, but he’s still an infant. By the time Oliver and Monica are done with him…I don’t know what the results will be. I want better for my niece and nephew, Saul, but shy of kidnapping them, there isn’t much I can do.”

“And you don’t want to be a father,” Salazar says.

“Gods, no. Not right now, at least. I might be studying at university while spying on mad people, but if you added parenting to that, it would break me.”

Monica is just as awful as Robert about teasing him for being stuck on a sofa. Granted, he has revenge on the day of her arrival in April when she stares at the telly and its flickering images. “What in the name of Merlin are you watching, Saul?”

“It’s called ‘Knot’s Landing.’ It’s from the other side of the pond, and is so dreadful it manages to round the corner back into being interesting again.” Salazar glances at her. “Please tell me that nothing else has gone wrong. I could get up from the sofa at this point and walk about well enough, but I wouldn’t enjoy it. Neither would anyone else.”

Monica regards the program for another few minutes before shaking off the lure of awful telly. “Evan Rosier Junior is dead. He spent a bit too much time bragging on what he did to Karl, and Alastor Moody took offence. During a battle two days ago, Moody killed him. It wasn’t the sort of kill an Auror should indulge in, either, but people are angry and frightened, and not in the mood to complain overly much. Barty Crouch Senior is applying a sanction to Moody’s file, but otherwise, nothing will be done.”

“I imagine not,” Salazar says, though he has a feeling that Amelia Bones, rising member of the M.L.E. and holder of the Bones Seat in the Wizengamot, possibly has many things to say to Barty Crouch Senior about his haphazard application of wizarding law. “Who is to replace Evan Junior after his very brief tenure in the Innermost Circle?”

Monica’s lips pull back in a disdainful sneer. “Augustus Rookwood.”

“That’s two changes to the Second Circle, then,” Salazar notes. John Avery Junior was required to take his mother Martha’s place in February, after her arrest by the M.L.E. ended with her swift incarceration in Azkaban.

“Victor Crabbe took the place emptied by Rookwood’s promotion,” Monica says. “Gareth Prewett is one of the three who rose into the Third Circle.”

Salazar rests his hands over his eyes. “Fucking bloody hell.” Molly Weasley deserves to have more sensible cousins than the idiots she has been saddled with.

“The others are Benedict Mulciber and Martin Thatcher.”

Salazar refuses to uncover his eyes. “Is there anything else? Did anything explode?”

Monica remains far too quiet.

Salazar reaches for a cushion and places it over his face. “Don’t answer that question. I no longer wish to know.”

“Then I’ll give you the worse news, in that it’s personal,” Monica says. “Aubrey Scrimgeour’s husband, Deacon, is dead. He died in the same battle that rid us of Evan Rosier Junior.”

Salazar sighs into a cushion that smells like it has been avoiding the housekeeping charms. “Fuck.”

“Oh, and Rodolphus Lestrange is going to marry Bellatrix Black in May.”

Salazar groans. “Please stop talking. Watch the stupid Muggle telly program so I can pretend not to thinking about that pair in any fashion whatsoever.”

* * * *

Salazar can’t return to spying in direct fashion until late in May. He has a new scar on his left side, but can hold his own in a duel again without collapsing in a heap afterwards.

Geronimus and Anastacia Branstone Greengrass’s daughter, named Daphne, has been born in the meantime. Salazar’s late return means he also did not have to suffer through the Black-Lestrange wedding. There are only so many things he can tolerate in a century, and witnessing that pair marry is bloody near incomprehensible, especially after Jewel told him that Bellatrix Black wore white.

Bellatrix Black. In bridal white. Salazar refuses to contemplate the idea any further.

“She married that idiot Rodolphus without permission from the family,” Robert seethes. “She didn’t even warn them!”

“That must have gone over well.”

“We’re Blacks. Uncle Pollux had to talk Aunt Cassiopeia out of poisoning the groom. Not that I would have objected; I just worry that Bellatrix might’ve turned around and found an immediate replacement in Rabastan Lestrange,” Robert says.

Salazar shudders. “As I told Monica: the idea of Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange is horrific enough. Please don’t make it worse.”

“No, they did that on their own. Mother is displeased and Uncle Pollux is infuriated, but if he says anything, it will only be to dear Cousin Bellatrix, in private. Aunt Druella and Uncle Cygnus value their political connection to the Lestranges too much to protest, though they wanted someone who would…” Robert waves his hand in a vague gesture. “They hoped a different groom of their choosing would help to mitigate the fact that Cousin Bellatrix is swiftly losing her mind.”

“If I were not aware of the sort of man Rodolphus Lestrange happens to be, I might pity him.”

Robert lets out a humorless snort. “He certainly deserves what he’s getting. I think the fool is even fond of the idea.”

“I wonder what Severus Snape thinks of your family’s new alliance,” Salazar says. That is when Robert loses patience with the fact that only one remaining member of the Underground has yet to try to slip through Severus Snape’s Occlumency barriers, plucks one of his own hairs, and orders Salazar to attend that evening’s nonsense in the Rothschild household as himself.

“I know Severus will be there tonight. Take the chance while you can, because it’s becoming harder to find Severus during these ridiculous gatherings.” Salazar isn’t inclined to argue with that logic. Everyone in the Underground reports that it’s been rare to find Severus Snape at a Death Eater gathering of late. Severus Snape is now most often only seen by the Inner Circles, but whatever orders Voldemort grants him, he does so in private. Constant mingling with other, lesser Death Eaters is no longer one of Severus Snape’s privileges, which he likely finds to be a relief.

Salazar does argue that he’ll need several more of Robert’s hairs than one, as he will be spending his first hour as Regulus Black relearning how to walk after suddenly gaining eight inches in height. Robert is still not amused by Salazar’s quip regarding ducking beneath doorways, but most Pure-bloods males are much shorter in height, averaging five-feet-eight to five-feet eleven inches tall. Salazar isn’t joking when he speaks of ducking.

Thus, Salazar’s current predicament: he is currently far too fucking tall. He is also standing in the second ring of the Inner Circle, but that is an annoyance he is already accustomed to.

Voldemort surrounds himself with three rings of twelve mad fools each, though three of his current chosen Death Eaters are neither fools nor mad, and quite possibly bored witless right now. He isn't certain which of the other Circle members is a disguised Order member, only that they are present.

Jewel and Regulus might argue about the state of their sanity, but Salazar knows where to find true madness. It shines in Voldemort’s feverish jewel-toned eyes, and in Bellatrix Lestrange’s insane black gaze.

Fortunately, this evening’s gathering of the Inner Circles is a brief affair, most of it taken up by the Dark Lord’s need to monologue upon his own greatness. No one dies; no one is even tortured. That has become such a rare event of late that Jewel leaves the room looking thwarted and suspicious.

Salazar wanders the crowded rooms of the estate afterwards, and discovers he is willing to concede one point to Robert—he can see almost everyone in the room with ease. He would normally need to perform a bit of levitation to see so many faces so clearly. The social cliques and families form and drift apart multiple times as the evening progresses. There are those who are Marked but not of the Circles. UnMarked family members. Children of Death Eaters who are old enough to be present and learn to become hateful bigots, but not yet take the Dark Mark. Then there are the unMarked spies who work within the Ministry of Magic, assorted sycophants from other species, and even representative idiots from the Continent and the United States. It takes a while to wade through the menagerie in order to relocate his target.

Severus Snape is twenty years old as of this past January, and looks to be intent on scowling his way to twenty-five at as fast a pace as he can manage. His hair and eyes are the same solid black, with a faint, near-metallic spectrum of color lurking beneath. The color black does not do that very often; it likes to be itself. Salazar’s wardrobe has always relied heavily upon black due to that same stubbornness.

Salazar’s current target also has a fondness for black clothing. Only Severus Snape’s shirt, nearly hidden, is a crisp white that almost blends in with skin still as pale as it was when Salazar first glimpsed him at age five. At age seventeen, Severus Snape had been near stoop-shouldered, the body language of one who is still hoping to avoid notice. What has changed since then is the quality of his clothing, the length of his hair, and the development of a stiff-backed, prideful posture that many of these idiot Pure-bloods envy, with impassive expressions and cutting words to match.

While working with Severus Snape in regards to Narcissa Malfoy’s pregnancy, Jewel’s respect for the young man has grown quite a bit. Salazar would even go so far as to say Jewel is fond of him. She even offered to be his patron and sponsor him as a brewer, but Severus Snape wouldn’t allow it. Jewel has learned enough of him now to understand that Severus Snape worries about unbalanced trades he would not be able to repay.

Severus Snape also has the face of a man who finds hate easily, but that means little. Voldemort left much of his beauty behind with each Horcrux he made, but he once had a face that Christian angels might have sung of. That didn’t stop him from becoming one of the vilest men this century has produced—and to everyone’s great misfortune, it has produced many.

Salazar selects a glass of wine, a dessert-sweet white, continuing to watch as Severus Snape moves among the Death Eaters to deliver polite greetings or scathing commentary. He does not limit his sharp tongue to those in lesser positions of power, but uses that weapon against anyone he seems to feel is deserving. A full half of them never seem to realize how gravely they’ve been insulted in the first place.

For now, Salazar approves of the man who will become the future Head of Slytherin House. He is not only a spy working to dethrone Voldemort, but a man who willingly resumes doing so many years from now. He knows what Severus Snape will be like as a teacher, thanks to his brother’s tales, but one with his skills might be an entirely different sort of educator when not forced to play the part of a man still loyal to his fellow Death Eaters. Salazar hopes, one day, to find out if that is true.

Except for Severus Snape’s visible displeasure and hidden concerns, he reminds Salazar quite a bit of Nizar in regards to a shared quality of grim determination. It makes him wonder if Severus Snape paid attention to a portrait above the Slytherin Common Room’s fireplace.

No. Best not to dwell. He will discover that for himself soon enough.

“Regulus.” Severus Snape inclines his head in a brief nod of greeting as Salazar approaches. “Do you have plans for the evening?”

“Avoiding Bellatrix,” Salazar replies in complete honesty. One corner of Severus Snape’s mouth turns up in a smile. “And you?”

“The same. I apologize that we haven’t spoken in some time,” Severus Snape says. “The Dark Lord has kept me…occupied.” The implication in _occupied_ is that these are tasks he would prefer not to be doing, but Salazar doesn’t mention it.

“We’re friends. I haven’t been insulted,” Salazar replies. It’s true sentiment as far as Robert is concerned.

“Are we?” Severus Snape seems to contemplate that notion. “Is the wine decent tonight? The last time I was here, it was swill.”

“Tonight, it’s excellent. I imagine the Dark Lord noticed the lacking quality and had words with Obsidian Rothschild.” Salazar smiles to hide his mild frustration at the need to blend a Pure-blood’s mannerisms and Regulus’s precise accent with the fading hint of a youth’s verbal phrasing. “We’ve known each other for years, and you think we’re not friends?”

Severus Snape looks Salazar full in the face, a faint air of contemplation on his features. It also gives Salazar his first true look at Severus Snape’s mental shielding.

Dear gods, this man is an artist, a da Vinci of Mind Magic. Everything is a mirror, like the faceted reflective eyes of a basilisk. Everything the mirrors reflect is a lie. It will take a bit of work and sly, cautious effort to slip past those mirrors unnoticed, and that is without knowing what layer of shielding might be waiting beneath.

Oh, well. At least Salazar can’t die of it.

“I’ve heard it is considered a favor owed if a Black considers you a friend,” Severus Snape murmurs.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Cousin Narcissa, then. She takes Uncle Pollux’s nonsense a bit too seriously,” Salazar replies. Also true; Robert has had no difficulties in discussing his family, swearing about them, and in general trying to purge many years of family poison as often as possible. It’s not only good for Robert to rid himself of that distress, it’s also quite informative.

“If I held to that view, I would have no friends at all. In fact, you are…” Salazar trails off. Robert has no other friends to speak of outside of Severus and the Underground. Those he’d socialized with in Hogwarts are now either unapologetic Death Eaters, think Regulus Black to be the enemy, Regulus believes them to be dead, or they are dead in truth.

Severus Snape is curious, but not leaping for the bait. “I am what?”

“A morose acquaintance,” Salazar finishes, smiling.

Severus Snape’s gaze snaps back to him, but his voice is mild as he asks, “Morose?”

There is the first crack in the armor. A hairline fracture appears in a single bit of mirror, so minute it could easily be missed. Voldemort would certainly not be looking for it; he hones in on dishonesty, overt displays of sentiment, and treachery. Besides, Salazar has the feeling that these seemingly impenetrable mirrors are not what Severus Snape allows the Dark Lord to see.

“Angry? Mournful Victorian? Snide acquaintance?” Salazar shrugs when Severus Snape continues to glare at him. “Definitely snide acquaintance, then.” He slips through that hairline fracture like vapor, coming out on the other side to be confronted with a literal void. Then the memories turn up, random snippets representing twenty years of a young man’s life. They are all for show, meant to distract the viewer from truths hidden in dark corners. The misdirection that Severus Snape creates within his own mind is amazing.

Severus Snape shakes his head. “You are entirely hopeless, Regulus Black.”

“I am a Black. Hope is an abhorrent concept,” Salazar returns dryly. Robert calls it one of his mother’s favorite maxims.

Severus Snape has a third layer of shielding, and if Salazar had been fooled by those random memories, he never would have found it. The void isn’t a shield at all, but a literal bloody void to trick another into believing they’ve found all there is. Severus Snape took another’s first lessons in Mind Magic and combined them with Muggle scientific concepts—Salazar imagines if Severus Snape believed he had an intruder in his mind, that void would become the lethal vacuum of space.

Gods. Absolutely _brilliant_. If Salazar doesn’t exercise the most delicate touch and utmost caution, he _will_ be caught. He’d rather not experience what Severus Snape has decided the vacuum of space is like, though the lack of air is lethal enough on its own.

“Your mother needs to get out more,” Severus Snape says. Salazar catches a flash of fiery red hidden in the memory of a puddle of water. _Friend_ is the label attached, but the more accurate sentiment would be _precious_.

Lily Evans. Neighbor, dear friend, teenager who refused to forgive. Slytherins do not discard their friends lightly. Where she remained angry, he buried the warmth of that friendship beneath protective ice.

“I think the only reason my mother ever socialized outside of Hogwarts at all is because Uncle Pollux forced her to do so.” Salazar finds the memory of Severus Snape overhearing the prophecy, but there is a precise line that separates the words Voldemort was told and what followed afterwards. That line is home to a memory that was shaped to fit, one of listening at keyholes and being caught at it. There is another precise line where that ill-fitting memory was tied in and smoothed over, ending with Severus Snape being flung from the Hog’s Head Inn like a piece of unwanted rubbish by Aberforth Dumbledore.

“Even the Dark Lord will admit to the usefulness of hope,” Severus Snape is saying.

Salazar’s shudder isn’t feigned in the slightest, though it is for more than one reason. “Yes, but that just reminds me about what _Bellatrix_ still hopes for, and she’s bloody married now!”

There is only one way someone could have interfered with Severus Snape’s mind without his notice, and it wouldn’t have been by penetrating his mental shielding by normal means. That was an Obliviation, one cast by someone skilled enough to fill in the blank they’d just created so the artifice would settle into place like a natural memory. No one would need to pierce these mental walls; the nature of the Obliviate spell does it for them, though it doesn’t allow anyone to crawl in behind it afterwards to poke about to their liking. It’s a direct path to the Obliviated memory only, else wizards would run about constantly Obliviating each other for the purpose of Legilimency rather than learning proper Mind Magic.

“God, why did you have to remind me of that?” Severus’s immediate revulsion in regards to the mention of Bellatrix Lestrange’s rather horrific, lustful fancy for Voldemort is another hidden gap that allows Salazar to look further. Now he has a very specific goal in mind rather than curious roaming, and he _will_ find it. Not the rest of what was most likely the latter half of the prophecy, which is literally gone beyond recall.

Salazar offers Regulus’s prim smile. “Because I refuse to suffer alone.”

Albus Dumbledore. The moment Severus Snape realized that his act of passing on a prophecy had placed his still-beloved friend in danger, he contacted the head of the Order of the Phoenix, despite the deep terror-loathing he feels for the old man. Severus Snape asked for Albus Dumbledore's protection and was treated as the foulest of beings, then manipulated into spying for the Order.

Despite the manipulation, Severus Snape is more intelligent than Albus Dumbledore gives him credit for. He “allows” Albus Dumbledore to teach him Occlumency and Legilimency, creating yet another false set of shields and a void of memories just for that purpose. After a few lessons, it is Severus Snape who reminds Albus Dumbledore that he can’t simply disappear from the Dark Lord’s Court, or his new spy will be dead before he can be of use.

Salazar already knows of the meeting in which the rest of the Order was introduced to the spy Albus Dumbledore claimed as his from the beginning of 1977. It had gone well just as it had also gone disastrously. Most of those present didn’t trust Severus Snape.

Severus Snape didn’t care about lacking trust. He cared more about Remus Lupin staying far, far away from him. Sirius Black, also, considering the warning Severus Snape imparted about hexing the bollocks off of James Potter’s other spouse if he even tried to _speak_ to him.

In private, the same evening of that meeting of the Order, Albus Dumbledore performed another moment of manipulation. “What purpose did lying to them serve? Or is it actually your intent to incite Alastor Moody into murdering me?” Severus asked.

“It will be much easier for you to be accepted as a double agent, one who is loyal to the Order, if the others believe this to be the truth,” Dumbledore replied. “Besides, in a way…it _is_ the truth, isn’t it?”

Severus covered the Dark Mark with his right hand, an unconscious gesture he sometimes has trouble avoiding. “For someone who was ready to vaporize me not so long ago, you seem quite certain of that.”

Dumbledore seemed to find the idea amusing. “Am I wrong?”

Severus didn’t want to answer, but Dumbledore terrifying the life out of him in the windswept dark was a very recent memory. “Not really, no.”

Then the memory is gone again, locked away, as if Severus Snape found himself dwelling on an unwanted thought. Salazar finds the memory has been replaced by a bit of vague lust for a man with a face Salazar doesn’t recognize. Stronger than that, though, interlacing everything, is a fierce need to protect. Severus Snape’s thoughts are most often consumed by a guilty tangle of _defend her-him-them_ from the Dark Lord—easier, Severus Snape believes, with the Potter cottage under a proper Fidelius Charm.

_I want kids, Sev. I want to be a mum someday!_

_You are a glutton for punishment, Lily_.

Salazar loses the connection when Severus Snape glances away. His eyes unerringly find Bellatrix in the crowd, near to Voldemort’s side. Severus Snape is an actor of immense talent to have convinced Voldemort, of all beings, that he is a double-agent whom Albus Dumbledore was convinced to trust. Salazar suspects the talent is intertwined with those blasted mirrors.

Fuck, but he has a ferocious headache. Salazar hasn’t faced that sort of Mind Magic challenge in centuries.

“You don’t think she’ll…succeed.” Severus Snape sounds as if he finds the idea nauseating.

“I don’t think the Dark Lord is interested in anything carnal. If he is…” Salazar tilts his head, pretending he is not in the slightest bit of pain. “One would hope that the Dark Lord’s taste runs to better quality than my mad cousin.”

Severus Snape makes a derisive sound. “One would hope, yes.”

* * * *

“ALBUS FUCKING DUMBLEDORE!” Salazar shouts the moment the door of his own home is shut firmly behind him.

Robert startles out of a light doze and falls out of his chair. “What the fuck?”

“Right. I’d forgotten you would be here still.” Salazar drags both hands down his face. “Go home, Robert. Go to bed.”

“I take it things went well?” Robert hedges, climbing to his feet.

“Well enough,” Salazar concedes. “The Underground already knows to keep watch over Severus Snape, and if necessary, act to save his life. I would appreciate it if you would send word to Trinity, so the others will know to continue to do so, especially now.”

“Why, though?” Robert asks. “And I’m not thanking you for the Patronus practice. I’ve gotten it to talk, but it still isn’t anything but a silvery blob spouting words.”

“That’s because you’re fighting what it wishes to be,” Salazar reminds him. “Severus Snape changed his spots by way of accepting a yoke. He doesn’t deserve to die of it.”

Robert scowls. “Ah. That would explain you cursing Dumbledore’s name. I’ll see that it’s done. Get some rest and mourn the fact that you are once again far too short.”

“Get out of my house! I’ll tell you what occurred last night when you deign to find your way out of bed tomorrow.” Salazar shakes his head when Robert laughs and Disapparates. “You pain in the backside. I hope you survive this war.”

“ _What happened?_ ” Nizar’s portrait asks after Robert has gone.

Salazar retrieves and imbibes a pain-killing potion first. The throbbing ache in his head is lessened, but not gone. It will take darkness, quiet, and possibly forced sleep to be rid of it entirely. “Little brother, Severus Snape is one of the most brilliant practitioners of Mind Magic I’ve ever met. Ever.”

Nizar’s portrait whistles. “ _Better than you?_ ”

“On a level,” Salazar decides after a moment’s thought. “The only advantage I truly had was that of centuries of learning and practice.”

“ _And your delightful cursing of Dumbledore’s name?_ ”

“When Severus Snape overheard that Seer’s prophecy, he asked for the assistance of someone he loathed. Instead of concerning himself with lives, Albus Dumbledore concerned himself with manipulation.”

Nizar raises an eyebrow. “ _So, Snape wanted out, but he didn’t want to work for Dumbledore._ ”

“No. Albus Dumbledore made certain Severus Snape felt as if he had no choice.”

“ _That makes sense_.” Nizar tilts his head. “ _You haven’t mentioned the second half of the prophecy yet. Did Snape know it?_ ”

“No, and that would be my reason for cursing Albus Dumbledore,” Salazar says. “When Severus Snape overheard that prophecy, he overheard all of it. What it said, I don’t know, as the memory was expertly erased and replaced with another that vilified his actions.”

Nizar frowns. “ _How do you know Snape heard all of it?_ ”

“Cassandra’s Curse, Nizar,” Salazar reminds him. “You know how it works.”

“ _You can’t interrupt a Seer who is having that sort of vision. Dumbledore would have had to get up in the midst of it to catch a spy, and that would have risked him not hearing part of the prophecy. He wouldn’t have done that_.”

“Information that would bring about You-Know-Who’s downfall would be far too vital to risk.” Salazar flops down on the sofa and winces at the too-thin cushioning. Re-stuffing. When he has time. Likely not until after the stupid war is ended. “Albus Dumbledore caught a Death Eater overhearing a prophecy, yes, but it was a Death Eater who had already decided he didn’t want to be one of You-Know-Who’s servants. Asking that Death Eater to spy in that moment, though—that wasn’t a debt or a trade. However, sending a Death Eater back to the Dark Lord with half of a prophecy believed to be a whole?”

Nizar stares at him. “ _Dumbledore knew. He already knew which families would fit the prophecy’s qualifications, and there stood_ _Lily Black Potter’s best friend, vulnerable and available. Dumbledore fucking knew that the moment Snape realized she was endangered by that prophecy, he would act on it._ ”

“And that he would do so in desperation.” Salazar nods. “Albus Dumbledore deliberately created the very circumstances that cause Severus Snape to now believe he is deeply indebted to the man, more so when you consider that those same circumstances will also keep Severus Snape free of Azkaban when this war ends next year.”

“ _There is nothing we can do about it, either. Is there?_ ” Nizar asks.

“No. We cannot do anything.” Salazar leans back to rest his aching head on a much-abused cushion. “In fact, we can never speak of this to anyone at all.”

“ _Fuck._ ” Nizar sounds bewildered. “ _You know, if I were trapped in that sort of position, I’d be angry and bereft of patience all the fucking time, also._ ”

“As would I.”

* * * *

Salazar is not the only one to notice when Severus Snape’s absences become ever more frequent. The Underground confirms it, one member at a time; after the end of May, Severus Snape is most often missing from Voldemort’s Court entirely, including the meetings of the Inner Circles. The Innermost Circle is the one the Underground can’t breach but for Occlumency used against its only two susceptible members, Cornelius Yaxley and Allenford Selwyn Junior, but that only avails them the knowledge that Voldemort is telling _no one_ what it is he orders Severus Snape to do.

“Why?” Gwen asks as she spends the evening in Salazar and Robert’s company. She scowls as she walks, mulling over this new and annoying puzzle. “Does the Dark Lord fear the Phoenix lot that much?”

“It has nothing to do with Dumbledore, and everything to do with that damned prophecy,” Salazar replies.

Gwen’s scowl deepens. “You put faith in that nonsense, Saul? I expect that Dumbledore, or even the Dark Lord might be convinced, but you?”

Salazar rolls his eyes. “I truly, utterly loathe your education. Does anyone know when Hogwarts last hired a teacher of Divination who wasn’t a charlatan?”

“If it wouldn’t give the game away, I’d ask Cousin Andromeda if Thorn’s predecessor was worthwhile,” Robert says. “I rather doubt it, though. Gwen, Saul is a bloody master of Divination magics! Of course the words of Cassandra would concern him!”

Gwen gives Saul curious look. “My apologies. I hadn’t realized, though calling Professor Thorn a charlatan is quite accurate. My father remembered Divination fondly, but I dropped the class after a month in my third year. I already knew how to lie; I didn’t need that man trying to teach me how to be _bad_ at it.”

“Quite understandable,” Salazar says in forgiveness.

Robert shoves his hands into his pockets as they follow the forest trail. As the Summer Solstice approaches, the sun has beaten down to dry up the earth instead of offering the more typical damp of a late English spring. The weather often seems to be just as displeased with this war as they are. “I would imagine that the Dark Lord worries that Dumbledore would just force his way into Severus’s mind and take whatever information he wanted.”

“Dumbledore is too much of a bleeding heart to do that,” Gwen says in scorn.

“No. He is not,” Salazar murmurs. “Take heed to those words. In his own way, Albus Dumbledore is just as dangerous as the Dark Lord.”

“So…forcing his way in, then?” Robert prods when Gwen’s shocked silence continues on for too long.

“I think Severus Snape would convince Albus Dumbledore that he had succeeded, were he to try.” Granted, Salazar believes Albus Dumbledore is most likely trying at every granted opportunity, especially when he believes himself to be Severus Snape’s teacher in Occlumency and Legilimency. “The Dark Lord is convinced, but sneaking into that man’s head isn’t as easy as he would let them believe it to be. Albus Dumbledore and the Dark Lord will both look for the wrong things, and thus never succeed.”

“Then they are being cautious with their spy,” Gwen realizes. “Dumbledore invites Severus to join the Order meetings where almost nothing of substance is spoken of. The Dark Lord is keeping Severus away from other Death Eaters, so Dumbledore will have no advance warning of anything he plans.”

Salazar nods. “But for little bits of usefulness here and there, Severus Snape is currently trapped in a stalemate position. Dumbledore and the Dark Lord will maintain faith in ‘their’ spy, but others are doubtful and distrustful. They are both testing him to see if he will break.”

“He won’t,” Robert declares with absolute faith. “Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t know Severus as well as they believe they do.”

“No,” Salazar agrees, though Gwen is still frowning in thought. “He will not break for either of them.” Severus Snape does not fear Albus Dumbledore’s displeasure, or the Dark Lord’s anger. Not any longer. Now he fears failure, as he knows what it means should he fail to safeguard Lily Black Potter.

There is little time to contemplate the Order’s spy in the weeks that follow. The forest meetings become brief preludes to assault and chaos. Cornelius Fudge might hold the Minister’s seat, but he is doing a pitiful job of holding the Ministry and the Wizengamot together. With every successful attack, Voldemort’s forces hammer on Wizarding Britain’s belief that the Ministry of Magic will save them.

Draco Lucius Malfoy is born to Narcissa Black Malfoy in the early morning hours of fifth June. Jewel is still irritable and exhausted when Salazar next sees her a few days later. “A difficult birth,” she says, confirming the rumors that have been circulating. “I believe the boy will be healthy, but Narcissa will be some months recovering, even with potions and a midwife’s prodding.”

“Oh, yeah. Draco will be just fine,” Nizar’s portrait tells Jewel by sign language. “Also, he’ll be loud.”

“He is already that,” Jewel replies with faint amusement. “Please tell me that he takes after his mother. Narcissa is cold, but Lucius is a foul fool of a man. Better the former than the latter.”

“He definitely isn’t cold.” Nizar hesitates. “I think, if Draco is granted the opportunity to get his shit together, that he could be better than Lucius. Better than both of them, maybe. He’s academically inclined, even if he was still acting like a completely foolish prat when I knew him. He has fire and drive in his favor. It’s the Blood Purity bigotry his father spews that doesn’t help, but…huh. Does Lucius strike you as the type to be an indulgent father?”

“Indulgent? Certainly. For the right reasons?” Jewel shakes her head. “At least the boy will have his grandmother, Druella, to balance out the stupidity that will be rampant in his home.”

Nizar’s portrait lets Salazar know of another birth on the twenty-third. “ _Dudley was born today. Is born today. Sometimes time travel makes things so bloody weird_.”

Salazar finds the birth announcement in Little Whinging’s bloated, self-important newspaper. It’s exactly like every other birth announcement from that village, meant to fit in and appear just as similar, just as _normal_ , as everyone else. Salazar stuffs that newspaper into his fireplace afterwards on general principle.

On the thirtieth of July, Neville Franklin Longbottom is born. Salazar receives a Patronus from Amy Malden. Despite her tired voice, her Patronus remains a corporeal, massive war horse, of the sort bred to carry fully armored knights. “For the Underground: it’s a boy. Neville. His father fainted during the delivery.”

Nizar’s portrait smiles when Salazar repeats the message. “ _She must be so proud. She wouldn’t have broken cover, otherwise._ ”

“Proud, and definitely unable to resist the opportunity to lovingly mock her husband.”

Tomorrow will be the thirty-first of July, 1980. In Godric’s Hollow, another baby is about to be born.

Salazar spends the day of his little brother’s birth inside the Willow House listening to music, alternating between Joy Division, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and Moody Blues albums from the ’60s, as he doesn’t like their later work. It’s also the first chance he has to listen to Queen’s newest album, _The Game_. He decides he likes it, and his approval of the music climbs when Nizar’s portrait excitedly announces that he recognizes the third track, “Another One Bites the Dust.” It certainly isn’t something the Dursleys would allow inside their house; that song is a sign that his little brother will sometimes be able to escape their gods-awful influence.

“ _Didn’t the guy singing on this album die this year?_ ” Nizar asks while “New Dawn Fades” is playing.

“Yes. Eighteenth May. The same day Mount Saint Helens exploded.” The sensation had been so intense that for a moment, Salazar was convinced someone had set off a nuclear device powerful enough to shock him senseless again. “His name was Ian Curtis. He hung himself the day before he and his bandmates were to go on tour across the pond.”

“ _Poor bastard._ ” Nizar waits until Salazar finishes the potion he is working on. “ _And you’re listening to a song sung by a dead guy on my birthday._ ”

“I could just as easily play Bach, Handel, Beethoven, and so many others of classical origin, who are also very, very dead,” Salazar replies.

“ _That doesn’t change the fact that almost everything you’re listening to is depressing, Sal. Why?_ ”

Salazar finds glassware to pour the resulting pain-killing potion into. He can’t do much to treat the Cruciatus Curse except brew potions for pain, nerve restoration, and bone repair. There is Nizar’s trick with blood magic, but many are still too leery of that magical concept to accept the assistance. “Because you are now in two places at once, little brother, and I can’t be in either one of them.”

“ _Good point._ ”

Salazar shoves a cork into a phial and looks up at his little brother’s portrait. Painted in 992, his brother will forever be age seventeen within the bounds of that canvas.

“Happy birthday, _hermanito_. If I could do so, I would tell a newborn child how very glad I am that he exists.”

* * * *

Without Elizabetha as his guide, Salazar has to find out what his little brother’s birth star is on his own. He enlists the help of a discreet Hindu magician on the Continent.

Hiara listens to Salazar speak of his brother’s birth and declares that Nizar is Uttara Bhadrapada. The same star as his father, overseen by the serpent Ahir Budhnya.

There are no coincidences. None.

“Uttara Bhadrapada, of the twenty-six nakshatras.”

Salazar narrows his eyes at Hiara. “I thought there were twenty-seven.”

“It depends on the stars. It is becoming more common to say there are twenty-seven, but that is not always true. Do you know what they say of a male child born under this star?” Hiara asks.

“Good-hearted and short-tempered.”

Hiara smiles. “Both are true, but there is more.” They look over at a bookshelf crammed in close to their table and select a particular book, wrapped in brown leather but entirely lacking in letters that would identify it. Hiara turns several pages until they find what they are looking for, then hold out the open book to Salazar. “Read.”

Salazar takes a quick glance before frowning. Sometimes the _hindavī_ magicians are terrifying in their Divination talents, even those among them who profess not to have any. Salazar hadn’t mentioned he could read Devanagari script, let alone Hindi.

_Uttara Bhadrapada, twenty-sixth nakshatra, a companion of Algenib in Pegasus, and of Alpha Andromadae within Andromeda’s vast network of stars. Uttara Bhadrapada, guarded by Shani, who is God of Justice, whose steed is the wise and playful Crow. Uttara Bhadrapada the Fixed Constellation, a man with two heads, a star for twins._

Salazar lifts his head and stares at Hiara. They tilt their head, smiling. “Is there something wrong?”

“No,” Salazar responds in a hoarse voice.

_A child of Uttara Bhadrapada understands the nature of duality. They are attractive but appear innocent, a beacon to those who love them, a trickster to those they love in return. Those born of this star will never treat anyone as above or below them, no matter their achievements. They will help all equally even as they wish not to trouble others with any pain of their heart._

_Their health will be good even when it is not. They will claim no physical ailment until another is capable of seeing what the child of Uttara Bhadrapada will refute._

_A child of Uttara Bhadrapada is known to have a temper that sparks like tinder, though the embers are easy to quench. They will not hesitate to sacrifice even their life for those who love them, but once they bleed, they will become a tiger. This tiger of Shani will turn upon the enemy with vicious teeth and merciless claw, and the God of Justice will smile._

_The child of Uttara Bhadrapada will easily master many subjects to be a learned being, but they will both share and hoard that knowledge as a serpent hides the nature of its temperament. Wisdom will emerge from their hands, but their works will not bear their name. Words will fall from their tongue like honey or poison, pulling the air from an enemy’s lungs while granting life to those who are in need. Their skills will not go unnoticed, and while claiming humbleness, a child of Uttara Bhadrapada will be granted the gift of great esteem._

_The child of Uttara Bhadrapada has the capacity to be extraordinary, and their feats will sing of it. They will lay down no task until it is completed and think nothing of the cost. Their dual nature does and does not fear failure, for it is not fear of the self, but one devoted to others._

_Those of Uttara Bhadrapada are burdened by the weight of their fathers: they praise them, but are apart from them. Their childhoods are lonely, but neglect will be balanced by happiness when they leave the homes that raised them._

_Their marriage will be blessed and their spouse most suitable, a relationship of joy. The child of Uttara Bhadrapada will have children who love and obey, and they will then have children who honor them._

“I think that might be one of the most accurate and terrifying things I’ve ever read.” Salazar closes the book, but Hiara does not move to take it.

“Keep it,” they say. “I think you will need it, but only after I tell you of your star.”

“That isn’t what I’m here for, Hiara.”

“It is now,” Hiara counters, ignoring Salazar’s irritated huff. “Your date of birth. Your time of birth. Where. I will know, and thus, so will you.”

“Five of the morning, seven minutes after the hour, five seconds into that seventh minute.” Salazar knows and remembers because his father, like Myrddin, had been a complete bastard for Arithmancy and the importance of numbers. “Burgos, in Castile. Twenty-eighth December 969.”

Hira seems entirely unfazed by Salazar’s year of birth. “No, I am not surprised,” they say, confirming Salazar’s thoughts. “Those centuries weigh on you, Son of Pushya. Those stars have strong ties to the waters of Ganga.”

“The Ganges River?”

“Either,” Hira says in dismissal. “What is important for you right now is this: Ganga is a means for the ascent of the dead.”

Later, Salazar opens the book again, and finds the entry for Pushya. All of it is hand-written, translations or notations that Hiara themself made as they practiced their magical talents.

_Pushya, most beloved of nakshatras, the eighth nakshatra found in Karkata. The children of Pushya can be timid when young, not wishing to alienate those who are important to them, but as they grow and learn, they will claim new strength from the star of their birth._

_A child of Pushya will face hardships in the early part of their life before success comes to them. Dependence on others results in a later desire to be reliant on themselves, but age and experience will teach them that a solitary path is not necessary for a happy life. They desire to live with family, though circumstances will often keep them apart._

_A child of Pushya is seldom found to lack the morality that guides us along the path to enlightenment. They are calm and patient, working towards any goal with persistence and utmost concentration. They will help others without boasting of their deeds, offering instead the warmth of hospitality and home. No matter the gender, a child of Pushya has the instincts of a mother, a desire to look after and care for those who are in need of love, shelter, and a just guiding hand. The earth often speaks to those born of Pushya, and they will speak to it in return. A child of Pushya is a counselor, a guiding force, a teacher offering the paths to skill and knowledge._

_As with any child of a nakshatra, they can have faults. A child of Pushya can be narrow-minded and possessive, their protective nature turning fierce and unyielding if not tempered and balanced by their kindness. Discipline could easily become headstrong stubbornness and fundamentalist thought which precludes others for faults that are not of their own making._

_They are restless workers, and will not give up when met with failure. Without the limitations of others, the results of their endeavors may be far outside the realm of what is expected of them. A child of Pushya considers it of utmost importance to protect the family or community they are born to, or the one they claim later in life. The qualities of care, protection, and kindness dominate all that the child of Pushya will do. For them, life is a circle without start or end_.

Salazar flips through the book, wondering what Hiara’s thoughts are on the Ganges River. There is a single page, written in their flowing Devangari script.

_Ganga is the three-worlds road to travel, the Triloka-patha-gamini. Ganga flows in Heaven, on Earth, and in the Worlds Between. All must cross her waters, living and dead. She is the means of descent for the gods to visit their Chosen upon the Earth. She grants ascent to those who have passed on. Ganga is a circle of life, death, and rebirth, and thus is never-ending._

Salazar decides he’s read enough and closes the book, feeling both miffed and off-kilter. He is also certain that somewhere in the afterlife, Elizabetha Fleamont Potter is laughing at him.


	29. Hell is Empty, and All the Devils are Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Not a soul  
>  But felt a fever of the mad and played  
> Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners  
> Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,  
> Then all afire with me. The king’s son, Ferdinand,  
> With hair up-staring—then, like reeds, not hair—  
> Was the first man that leaped, cried, “Hell is empty  
> And all the devils are here.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flailed enjoyed at by @norcumii! 
> 
> Also: *dumps a bunch of information on everyone* Have fun!

“Now are you willing to admit that you’re a paranoid nutter?” Lily asks James in exasperation.

James looks up from his intense study of his newborn son’s face. “We’re in hiding from You-Know-Who. One of those is definitely a given.”

Lily rolls her eyes, glancing over at the chair on the other side of their bedroom. Sirius was a champion supportive spouse through every single hour of labor, delivery, placenta removal, and cleanup, but once he knew Lily and Harry were fine, he sat down and fell asleep so fast that their midwife had to save him from falling to the ground. James should possibly have checked that Sirius was using a Pepper-Up, but to be fair, he was really distracted.

“I meant about things going wrong with the pregnancy, or the birth,” Lily says. “Harry’s fine. I’m fine. I could eat a horse, though.”

Their midwife borrowed from St. Mungo’s, Julia Ribbon, snickers as she expertly uses her wand to put fresh sheets underneath and above Lily. There is some sort of cloth involved that Lily still needs to lie on, which is how James learns that pregnant women can shed messy uterine baby padding for up to three days after having a kid. This whole experience has been about learning things he didn’t want to know, including the fact that there comes a point in a medical situation where you just stop caring about naked.

“I don’t advise you eat a horse, given I’d like you to rest tonight. You’ll probably feel energetic, though. That was a good, healthy delivery we did together. I know a lot of new mothers who checked themselves out of St. Mungo’s, went home, and completely changed their entire houses, inside and out. Save that energy, though. Babies are amazing and we love them, but they’re exhausting after a while. Have a light meal, read a book, play quiet games with your spouses, but be smart—keep that itch to do things in reserve, because you’ll need it.”

Lily smiles at their fantastic, miracle-working midwife who is worth her weight in gold. “Thanks, Julia. I’m really sorry about how things will have to go once you’re certain everything is fine.”

Julia shakes her head. “No apologies needed, Lily. I volunteered to be Obliviated after this just to keep you and that new baby safe, and I don’t regret it at all. It would be nice if you could tell me about all of this later, once the war is won and You-Know-Who is gone, though.”

James glances at her in surprise. Julia doesn’t sound as if she’s afraid of Voldemort. She sounds _certain_. “You really think we’re going to beat him?”

Julia looks at James as if he’s daft. “Of course we are. It may take a while, but we really are talking about a good versus evil situation here. Just look at the European Wizarding War! It took some years to defeat him, but we did it. We all joined together and we beat Grindelwald, and we’ll beat You-Know-Who, too.”

Lily reaches out, waiting until Julia grips her hand. “You’re amazing. You truly are. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Julia says, and then smirks a little when Lily goes right to sleep. “And that’s how you cheat a bit at wandless magic. Sorry, but not really. She needs the rest,” Julia says to James when he starts to bristle. “Nothing is wrong, but that was hours and hours of hard work. It’ll help to soothe that itch to do everything, too. I really meant it about saving your energy for the baby.”

“Right. Okay.” James glances down at his son again, red-faced and pale, but with some rather obvious tufts of curly black hair atop his head. They love him already, all three of them. Not that they didn’t before, but that was a hypothetical tadpole in a womb. This is a living, breathing child who James would fight for even if someone stole him away to the other end of the universe. “So…this is my first time. What’s next, Julia?”

Julia grins. “Since he’s not hungry yet, it’s time for the birth certificates!” she chirps. They go downstairs, and James watches as Julia fills out most of the information herself. One application for a certificate of birth goes to the Ministry of Magic, while the other is filed with the United Kingdom so that the UK knows that Harry exists.

“I’m worried about someone going digging for those. Either of them,” James says.

Julia nods. “We know. Your marriage certificate is already stored in the vault for sensitive documents within the Ministry, and little Harry’s certificate application, and an official copy of the certificate itself, will join it.” She purses her lips at the pair of certificates. “It’s really too bad that birth times, sizes, and weights aren’t on these. Sometimes it’s good to keep track of those sorts of things. I’ll write it down for you on a card of my own.”

“Hey, my kid is healthy,” James counters. “I’m happy with that.” His son came into this world upset and yowling about it until Julia magicked him clean and dry, wrapping him in a warm towel. Harry had immediately calmed down, looking around with huge, inquisitive blue eyes that already show flecks of green. Sirius cheered like a maniac, Lily wept with joy, and James froze into a useless statue until Julia placed his son in his arms. He hopes nobody needs for him to put his kid down for a while, because that isn’t happening.

“Does it look right to you, James?” Julia asks. “I’d rather you check before I stamp it and make it official.”

“Yeah, we really don’t need another Fleamont incident,” James murmurs, and Julia laughs.

“This one for the United Kingdom will need to be filed with the local administration. It usually takes the Muggle offices a few months to send back the official certificate. The one for the Ministry, though, I sign and seal, so you should receive the official Ministry certificate within a few days. They won’t look much different from what you’re seeing now.”

“Shi—bugger,” James amends, even though his son is not only a newborn, and he’s asleep. “Owls can’t breach our Fidelius Charm. Can we ask that the certificates be delivered to a proxy?”

Julia frowns. “I don’t see why not. The Ministry certificate is going straight to the Special Documents and Processing Offices, so if you ask Harry’s certificate to be delivered to Sirius, that shouldn’t be an issue. If your other mail is still going through the Owl Post, then whoever has been receiving it on your behalf will take delivery and bring it here.”

“Good.” James sighs. “I really don’t want to Obliviate you. You’ve been a bloody lifesaver.”

“And I’ll still be a lifesaver by forgetting I was here,” Julia says briskly. “I knew what I was getting into. Don’t turn into mush on me now, Auror Potter.” She slides the dual certificates across the table. “I just need to get your signature, and then we can see about getting a bottle fixed up for the little one until Mum decides if she’s going to breastfeed or not.”

Ministry of Magic

Certificate for the Announcement of Birth

&

Verification of New Wizarding Offspring

Name: Harry James Potter

Sex: Boy

Date of Birth: Thirty-first July 1980

Place of Birth: Number 7 Old Oak Row, Godric’s Hollow, Somerset, England

Witnessed Sign of Magical Potential: Yes

Nearest Registered Magical Community: Godric’s Hollow, Somerset, England

Father: James Henry Potter of Godric’s Hollow, Somerset, England

Magical Family: Yes

Magical and/or Muggle Occupation:

Auror and Representative of the emergency militia group, the Order of the Phoenix

Father: Sirius Orion Black III of Islington, London, England

Magical Family: Yes

Magical and/or Muggle Occupation:

Auror and Representative of the emergency militia group, the Order of the Phoenix

Mother: Lily Juniper Black Potter of Cokeworth, West Midlands, England

Maiden Name: Evans

Maiden Magical Family: No

Magical and/or Muggle Occupation:

Attaché to the M.L.E. via the emergency militia group, the Order of the Phoenix

The Muggle version is just as complicated, and it doesn’t even acknowledge magic.

Certified Copy of an Entry

Birth 817295550

Registration District: Somerset

Sub-District: Somerset County Council

Administrative Area: Somerset

Child

Date and Place of Birth:

Thirty-first July 1980

7 Old Oak Row, Godric’s Hollow, Ilchester, Somerset, England

Name and Surname:

Harry James Potter

Sex: Male

Father

Name and Surname: James Henry Potter

Place of Birth: Godric’s Hollow, Ilchester, Somerset, England

Occupation: Police Constable

Age: 20

Mother

Name and Surname: Lily Juniper Potter

Place of Birth: Cokeworth, West Midlands, England

Maiden Surname: Evans

Surname at Marriage if Different: N/A

Usual Address (If Different from Child’s Place of Birth): N/A

Informant: Father

“Informant,” James repeats in bemusement. “You’d think I was reporting a crime instead of a birth.”

“I think the Muggle government is sometimes just as bad as we are for not keeping up with the changing meaning of certain words,” Julia says.

“And police constable—that isn’t going to raise any red flags, is it?”

Julia shakes her head. “That’s already taken care of through the Ministry and the Muggle government’s cooperative efforts at maintaining the International Statute of Secrecy. I told you; the only thing you need concern yourself with is signing them.”

“Got it.” James does so, using the best penmanship he can manage when he’s refusing to stop holding the baby. “Good enough?”

“Perfect.”

“Why don’t Lily and Sirius need to sign these?” James asks. It seems as if they should; they’re Harry’s parents, too.

“Good question.” Julia taps both certificates with her wand, sending them off to two very different offices. “I imagine the reason is similar to the answer for the question as to why Muggles haven’t gotten around to adding the mother’s occupation to their birth certificate application form. Muggle women might not have made up a significant part of a wage-earning workforce until the last few decades, but they’ve _always_ worked. Ridiculous sexist nonsense.”

“Yeah. It’d be nice if we could acknowledge Sirius on the Muggle certificate, too,” James mutters.

“Our inter-government cooperation only goes so far,” Julia responds wryly. “Just have fun imagining their confusion if your wife has a child with Sirius while she’s still listed as your spouse.”

James snorts. “That isn’t confusion for them, Julia. That’s a scandal.”

“That just makes it more interesting.”

* * * *

The eve before Hallowe’en 1980, Salazar meets Robert in the place he has chosen. Given that at any point tomorrow, they are due to face an atrocity, Salazar is _not_ fond of the fact that Robert chose the Black family crypt in Chiltern Hills. He doesn’t necessarily mind crypts, having grown up playing in a former one with a nest of basilisks as a child, but the Blacks of the latest centuries don’t entomb their dead. They leave them lying around on raised platforms under perfect Preservation charms, granting the impression that Salazar is surrounded by many corpses who only need a nudge to wake up and rend an intruder limb from limb.

He should perhaps have avoided watching _Night of the Living Dead,_ but to be fair at the time, he didn’t yet realize what he was getting into. Nor did he know how fond Voldemort was going to be of creating Inferi.

“Robert?”

“I’ve got to get the hell out of there,” is the first thing Robert says to him when he appears from behind a curved wall of the inner vault.

“And I’d prefer to get the hell out of here, but…” Salazar cuts himself off when Robert begins to pace, so much distress radiating from him that it almost vibrates in the air. “Or not. What’s happened?” He removes a borrowed Death Eater’s cloak and sets it aside, glad to be rid of its weight and stench. Certain Death Eaters have no concept of cleanliness. “Don’t tell me you’ve somehow lost the spine for spying.”

“No, no. Not that.” Robert brushes his hair away from his face, still pacing. “Dead spies aren’t of much use, though.”

Salazar frowns. He hasn’t been in touch with large portions of the Underground for several months. First there was another assassination attempt on Lysander and Christina Bones as the latter gave birth to their daughter in the first week of August, and right in the middle of bloody St. Mungo’s, at that. Then Bradley Chambers, George Chambers’s unfortunate, idiotic son, died in battle. Too many were quick to insist that his death left the entire Chambers family succession in doubt, nearly sparking a war within Voldemort’s ranks until Georgette Hooper Chambers killed three of the idiots and reminded the others that she had a son. Jonathan is Bradley’s recognized Heir, and she won’t hesitate to kill anyone else who decided to conveniently forget her son’s existence.

Then Heliotrope Rothschild was arrested, and Onyx Rothschild, who had once been introduced to Salazar by Monty Potter, sent him a Patronus asking for a meeting. After an excusable excess of caution, Salazar did so, and found not only Onyx waiting, but his wife, Elizabeth Wilkes Rothschild, older sister of deceased William Wilkes. With Esmerelda now an eighteen-year-old adult, and her mother Heliotrope locked away in Azkaban as of September, the two wanted to be more involved with the Underground. That had been an interesting negotiation of involvement and requirements; Onyx still had a few of his father’s bad habits regarding Blood Purity, though he was trying to do better. Elizabeth had no idea what Muggles were like at all.

Salazar spent a great deal of October dragging Onyx and Elizabeth, under their new names of Geoff and Elsa Stivers, around London and other Muggle-dense areas of Great Britain. What little Blood Purity thoughts still lingering in Geoff’s thoughts were discarded in short order. Elsa is now obsessed with the cinema. It was a job well done, and worth it, but gods, dragging two older Pure-bloods around is exhausting. The young ones adapt so much faster.

“Trouble from the usual source?”

“No, not from _him_ ,” Robert responds. “I’m in his favor for loaning him my house-elf.” His brow furrows as his dark green eyes glint with sudden anger. “The utter bastard!”

Oh, there is definitely a tale waiting here. “First, tell me where the threat lies,” Salazar orders quietly. “Then tell me of your ire regarding the elf.”

Robert nods, shoves his long hair back from his face again with both hands, and begins pacing the crypt’s antechamber. His footsteps should be falling into the space like the crack of a pistol, but magic ensures the resident dead enjoy the hush of an undisturbed tomb. “It’s bloody Bellatrix. For some reason, she doesn’t trust in my loyalty to the Dark Lord. I have no idea what caused her to doubt me. I know I didn’t slip. Jewel would’ve handed me my backside if I had, but _nothing_ I’ve done in the past two months has convinced Bellatrix that I love the Dark Lord just as much as she does.”

“I don’t think anyone could attain Bellatrix Lestrange’s level of fanatic loyalty. As to her means…” Salazar considers it while Robert continues to pace. “She has known you longer than anyone else in the Dark Lord’s Inner Circles save her own sister.”

“Familiarity? Maybe,” Robert admits. “But before I noticed that Bellatrix had decided I was a problem, she’d already twice tried to kill me, Saul, starting in September. There were two more attempts this month. Bellatrix hasn’t acted against me in public, or made it obvious that it’s her, but I’m not stupid. There are Black fingerprints all over those attempts, and they’re the sort that Uncle Pollux would leave behind if he didn’t care that his target knew he wanted them dead. It’s not a warning, to his mind, just a means of making someone afraid.”

“Because Pollux Black is always certain that he’ll succeed,” Salazar murmurs. “She won’t change her mind, will she?”

“Certainly. After I’m dead,” Robert responds in irritation. “Which brings me to the incident with Kreacher.”

Salazar notes Robert’s pale features, pinched and fearful. “Go on.”

“What do you know of Horcruxes?”

“Fuck.” Salazar scrubs his face with his hands. “You’ve found one of them.”

Robert whirls around to stare at him. “You _knew?_ ”

“Yes. The Underground does not speak of them often, but the necessity of telling the others became evident after Blythe Petersen poisoned the Dark Lord, failed to kill hm, and died for it.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Robert says in frowning accusation.

“I was going to do so, the day you met Jewel and myself, but then…” Salazar gives Robert a frustrated look. “All I could do was tell you _not_ to attempt to assassinate the Dark Lord.”

Robert’s eyebrows rise. “Oh! Precognition. If I’d known of his Horcrux in advance, I might’ve…something might have gone wrong.”

“Perhaps,” Salazar agrees. It’s a very good theory, and likely correct. “And—it is not a single Horcrux.”

“Not a single…” Robert swallows, resisting the urge to be ill. “All right. I’ll concern myself with that horrific thought later. Here is why I know of this particular Horcrux.”

Voldemort gathered together all the members of his Inner Circles and asked if any of them would be willing to loan him the temporary use and command of a house-elf. Robert volunteered before anyone, at the very least hoping to convince Bellatrix that he was loyal. Of the surviving Black house-elves in Grimmauld Place, ancient Kreacher volunteered, as it is Kreacher who loves Regulus the most.

“I did add the polite caveat that the Dark Lord return my house-elf alive.”

Salazar grimaces at words that are both kind and endangering. “What did you pay for that in trade?”

Robert shrugs. “The Cruciatus Curse. At this juncture, it hurts my pride more than my body, and Severus was kind enough to grant me a potion for the pain.”

 _Good man_ , Salazar thinks. Severus Snape was doing so for other Death Eaters like Robert on the sly long before he turned spy. It’s a practice he refused to stop even after Voldemort threatened to punish him for it.

 _A Death Eater is not useful if they cannot walk, and it isn’t as if the lesson is an easy one to forget_ , Severus Snape had stated. Fortunately for him, the Dark Lord found the argument to be both true and amusing.

“When Kreacher was returned to me…” Robert clenches his hands into fists as he resumes pacing again. “He was near death, Saul. The Dark Lord _thanked me_ for Kreacher’s services, and left me to save Kreacher’s life on my own. That only increased Kreacher’s loyalty to me, as I could have easily chosen Mother’s favorite pastime and allowed him to die so she could mount his head on the wall.”

Salazar can easily guess what must have been done. “The Dark Lord, knowing how Pure-bloods treat their house-elves, didn’t expect you to ask anything of Kreacher, or to care if he died of what the Dark Lord did to him.”

Robert nods. “The Dark Lord used Kreacher to test a crafted defence for a Horcrux, and Kreacher told me everything about it that he could remember afterwards. He knows where it is, how to get to that hiding place safely, and how to retrieve it. He’s so loyal, Saul. Merlin, I hate to ask anything else of him, especially since I think this will break his ancient little heart.”

“You’re discussing faking your death,” Salazar realizes.

“I’d rather it be that than allow Bellatrix to succeed,” Robert confirms. “And I think I know how to convince the Dark Lord that it’s true.”

Salazar can see his way through that puzzle at once. “I take it You-Know-Who still has permission to call your house-elf.”

“He does, though he won’t take advantage of it unless something prompts him to do so…such as my disappearance.” Robert draws in a deep breath. “I don’t like it, but at least I can continue to spy afterward using Polyjuice.”

“Bloody. Multa. Facies. Sucus!”

Robert flashes a brief smile. “Right, yes. Polyjuice, that’s what I said.” His smile fades before Salazar can finish considering whether or not to fling one of the nearest Preserved corpses at him. “I told you I wanted to help stop the Dark Lord. If we can figure out how to get that Horcrux, then it’s a better start than what Blythe managed.”

“You could have made this decision without me. You’re a grown man, Robert. You don’t need my permission to do what you think is best.”

Robert hesitates. “Your permission? No. Your favor, though, would see to it that my life is saved before that Horcrux trap causes my death. There are—there are Inferi within its confines. Hundreds of them.”

Salazar turns around and swears, long and loud and vicious, but the vitriol isn’t satisfying. That explains why no group working against Voldemort has been able to account for a vast number of the war dead. “Do the Inferi rise when one walks into the trap, or when one attempts to remove the Horcrux?”

“I gained the impression from Kreacher that they rise when the Horcrux is removed from its resting place.” Robert’s voice is resolute, but quiet fear lurks beneath. It isn’t just the Inferi he is concerned with.

“Tell me more.”

Robert speaks of a cave a few hundred feet distant from a rocky English coastline. Inside is a magic-crafted fountain on a small island surrounded by water. The only way inside is to climb into a waiting boat and allow its set magic to draw you across that still water, but using strong light to look down into that water reveals the Inferi waiting in its depths. The cave is set with anti-Apparition wards set to prevent a human from entering or leaving, though the wards didn’t prevent Kreacher from doing so. They do prevent the house-elf from taking a human passenger along with them, though, an experiment Robert and Kreacher already performed on their own.

“The difficulty is the potion,” Robert says. “That’s what is in the fountain, and somewhere beneath that opaque green liquid is the Horcrux.”

Salazar has a bad feeling about this already. “What is the potion?”

“I don’t know. Kreacher says You-Know-Who referred to it as the Draught of Despair, but it doesn’t look like that potion. Yes, my Aunt Cassiopeia was that thorough,” Robert adds dryly. “You can’t empty the fountain with magic; only drinking the potion reveals the Horcrux. Kreacher speaks as if this potion retains the despair aspect, but the liquid glows like the Killing Curse, and it creates either blindness or hallucinations as you finish drinking it. Kreacher isn’t certain. What he does know is that the Horcrux that the Dark Lord placed in the fountain looked to be some sort of gold jewelry, possibly a necklace. The fountain refills itself rapidly after it’s emptied. Not only do you have the potion’s effects to contend with, but a very short window in which to retrieve the damned Horcrux in the first place. And—I think if the fountain was left empty, something else would go wrong.”

“What else?” Salazar asks.

Robert shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have, that there is another trap aside from the Inferi. Something truly unescapable.”

“I much prefer you alive, so we’ll not let that happen,” Salazar says. “When do you wish to do this?”

Robert appears briefly surprised, as if he expected an argument. “Soon. I think Bellatrix is plotting to murder me on Sirius’s birthday on third November, so she can then leave me as a present on his doorstep like a deranged fucking cat.”

“Then we’ve tonight to plan, and we should act the day after Hallowe’en. The second of November would be the latest date I would choose, and if I were you, I wouldn’t return to the Dark Lord’s Court after Hallowe’en’s yearly horror is done with.”

“If we—” Robert swallows again. “If you go into that cave with me, Kreacher might be forced to reveal your presence. I’d have to go in alone with him, drink the potion myself, give Kreacher the Horcrux—whatever it is—and order him to leave with it so that the Horcrux can be destroyed. If Kreacher can’t destroy it, then he’ll hide it until it’s safe for us to reclaim. If I wait until the Inferi are rising from the water before ordering Kreacher to leave without me, he’ll be…he won’t have a choice but to obey. He’ll hate it, but he’ll also be convinced that I’m dead. His certainty would convince the Inner Circles, and the Dark Lord, but I don’t know how I would survive it after he leaves.”

This is a terrible plan, the sort that will succeed because it is utter madness. “First, we will need to create a Protean Charm, something simple to grab, like a pendant. That would alert me as to Kreacher’s departure and your imminent danger.”

“What then?” Robert shoves his hands into his robe pockets. Salazar decides not to point out that Sirius Black has quite the similar mannerism. Robert long ago came to realize that he still loves his brother, but even before the war, their relationship was fraught, a disaster of harsh words and jagged arguments that their worthless family encouraged. “I’m really not in a hurry to die in truth, Saul.”

“Those anti-Apparition wards will not stop me. I’m an Earth-Speaker, Robert.” Salazar sighs and glares up at the crypt’s ceiling when Robert gives him a blank look. “It means that the element of earth speaks to me. It helps to fuel my magic. The cave walls and the wards would mean nothing, as I would simply convince the stone itself to allow me entry in order to retrieve you. The Dark Lord wouldn’t have an elemental magician in mind when crafting his protections, as even he doesn’t know what we are.” In this, the dodgy education Hogwarts has provided its students this century works in Salazar’s favor.

“That’s amazing. Is that sort of elemental magic rare?” Robert asks.

Salazar smiles. “It is and it isn’t. When it isn’t taught, it can be hard for a student to understand that a natural affinity for an element—or all elements, as a titled Elemental Magician would be aware of—means they have a specific magical talent. You aren’t an elemental magician of any sort, by the way. Karl, though…I think he is. That one reads as a Water-Speaker to me, but we’ve yet to discuss it.”

“All right. Kreacher will be convinced, you can save my arse, and if I don’t answer the Dark Lord’s call for the next meeting of the Inner Circles, the Dark Lord will call for Kreacher. If a panicked house-elf’s wailing doesn’t convince him I’m dead, little else will.”

Salazar nods, already thinking on the timing of it all. “That would be to your benefit, given that the Dark Lord would kill you through the Dark Mark if he believed otherwise.”

Robert scowls. “Thank you for the reminder. I’m already nervous; there’s no need to rub it in. I’m frustrated that Kreacher didn’t get a better look at the Horcrux, though; I’ve no idea what it is.”

“Replacing it with an exact duplicate is out of the question, then,” Salazar says.

“Not in this instance. _Gold jewelry_ is a bit vague. I thought perhaps we could do something Sirius would choose, and prank the bastard, instead.”

“Oh, this I want to hear,” Salazar responds, grinning. “How would you choose to do so?”

“Well, the Dark Lord claims that he’s the Heir of Slytherin often enough,” Robert says. “It would be quite a shock to him if he returned to the cave to check on his Horcrux, found it gone, and a replica of Slytherin’s famous Locket in its place.”

Salazar stops breathing. “Why?”

“Why that?” Robert seems taken aback. “I thought you’d be the first to realize why. It’s the sort of thing the Dark Lord would discover and misinterpret, that’s why. He’s an egomaniac and a narcissist. The Dark Lord wouldn’t immediately assume a theft and an endangered Horcrux. He’d be fool enough to believe that Salazar Slytherin’s ghost came along to safeguard a part of that mad bastard’s soul while leaving behind a symbol of his approval.”

Salazar makes himself breathe again. “I’m not certain if he is foolish enough to follow that line of thought, but I am fond of the idea of leaving that sort of symbol behind. I’ll see to it that a replica is made.” He has no time for a jeweler or goblin to craft such a thing, and that would invite too many questions, besides. He’ll have to make the copy himself, though it has been quite a while since he called forth precious metals and stones from the earth to create something new.

“I’ve said something wrong.” Robert takes a step forward in concern. “I can take care of that, Saul, even if we’ve only a couple of days. I still have contacts in Hogwarts who can give me the details of what the locket looks like from the Entrance Hall painting—”

“No.” Salazar dips his head in brief apology for the harsh interruption. “No. There is no need for that.”

Robert doesn’t look convinced. “If you’re sure, but this, that locket…I’ve upset you, I know I have.”

Salazar thinks of the weight of that locket in his hands. The portrait within its golden confines is held pristine in his memory, preserved by so many tricks of Mind Magic that to be in his own head is to navigate a maze. “The portrait would not avail you the correct details, though the artist was very close to painting it properly.”

“Except for what’s inside, though,” Regulus points out. He is holding himself still, as if wary of an explosion. “The portrait would never show anyone the locket’s contents. Some of us Slytherins theorized that the Entrance Hall portrait is bitter about the locket’s loss.”

Salazar wonders if he is truly going to admit this. Telling Jewel Burke was an act driven by instinct and Divination.

Perhaps this is, too. Had Elizabetha not warned him?

 _The first part of the solution to the puzzle you seek to solve has already placed itself before you. Soon, you will find the other half, and with it, your distraction_.

She was right; he is certainly distracted now.

“The locket was not lost during the Founder’s Era. It was stolen early in the fifteenth century.”

“What’s inside Slytherin’s Locket?” Robert asks bluntly.

Salazar can see it in his mind’s eye: Marion’s dark garnet hair with its gentle curl. Her bright sea-green eyes, a shine of rich color he’s only ever seen among those of true Gael-Norse descent. The welcoming curve of her lips; the intelligent playfulness of her smile, granted to all those she loved. Her skin was burnished gold rather than the wind-reddened paleness of the north.

He thinks of how Marion would tease him for being so fearful. “The locket held a portrait of my second wife.”

Robert’s steady gaze falters into bewilderment. “Your wife. _Your_ second wife. But…you can’t be him. You can’t be Salazar Slytherin.”

That decides his reaction; Salazar rolls his eyes. “It’s been over one thousand years, and still that riles my temper. Slytherin was a compromise of languages that others chose and refused to alter, Regulus Black. My name is Salazar Fernan of House Deslizarse de Gipuzkoa, Marqués de Castila y Léon.”

“Slytherin. Deslizarse.” Robert frowns as he repeats the names before his bewilderment presents itself in full. His eyes are wide and shocked, his question almost childlike in nature: “Have you come to save us?”

“Well, I’m certainly about to be saving you,” Salazar returns dryly. Robert makes a faint noise that is either disbelief or amusement.

Salazar reminds himself that Regulus Black only had his nineteenth birthday just this month. For all he has seen of war since declaring his intention to join Voldemort, he is still very young. “I spoke to you truly when we first met, Robert. It’s been my intent to save everyone who regrets their choice to follow the Dark Lord, no matter their House. I’ve done my best to save those who’ve fallen in battle without concern for whose side they fought for. The Underground exists for this very reason, and yet it still feels as if it is never enough. Ultimately, I am also here to save my brother, but he would throttle me for selfishness had I focused on that alone.”

Salazar has to swallow back too many emotions that wish to flood his throat and drown him. His brother is so close, and yet so far away. Nizar Hariwalt Deslizarse is within Hogwarts, safe within the confines of a complex magical portrait. Harry James Potter was born in Godric’s Hollow on thirty-first July and is hidden behind a Loyalty Charm. His brother is in two places at once—both of them unreachable.

“You have a brother?” Then Robert surprises him. “Oh! That man in the painting in the Slytherin Common Room! We all called him Professor Slytherin. He’s your brother!”

Salazar isn’t sure if he is meant to weep or smile in response to such a declaration. Nizar’s portrait has so often hidden from Robert that he’d started to wonder if perhaps his brother had done the same. “He is. Did you ever speak with him?”

Robert smiles. “I did. He told me his name, when I asked. Nizar Deslizarse. He’s…well, he’s prickly, like you. So bloody intelligent. So…” His expression slides down into weary dismay. “That portrait asked me not to join the Dark Lord. He wanted me to go home and weigh my options while far away from the politics soaking into the very walls at school. I—I didn’t listen to him. Your brother’s portrait probably thinks me a fool.”

“No, Robert. I know my brother. Nizar would be too grateful for your survival to be overly concerned with a single mistake, even one that involved accepting the Dark Mark.”

Robert rests his right hand on his left arm, covering the Mark already hidden by his robe sleeve. He studies the floor for a moment, biting at his lip, before lifting his head again. His dark green eyes suddenly seem ever so much older. Salazar has seen that happen on a battlefield many times as years of maturity catch up to a young solider all at once. “You’re really him, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

Robert’s brow furrows. “You look _nothing_ like that portrait in the Entrance Hall at Hogwarts.”

Salazar lifts both shoulders. “It was an entertaining bit of deception, that. Godric thought it fit my mood at the time, and found it quite humorous. Helga claimed that my appearance finally resembled my attitude in regards to mornings.”

“I see. I think. No, I probably don’t, but there isn’t really time to dwell on that right now,” Robert admits. “How is it that you’re going to save your brother, a man who has been dead for one thousand years? Or at least—well, no. You’re not dead. I suppose if you’re still roaming about, your brother could be, as well.”

“Oh, he’s not wandering so much.” Salazar grins. “It’s quite the tale.”

“A tale. Well, then.” Robert takes a deep breath. “Help me get that Horcrux and save my arse, Saul. Then I’ll do whatever it takes to help you save your brother, however it needs to be done.”

 _Soon, you will find the other half, and with it, your distraction,_ Salazar repeats in his head, quietly thanking Elizabetha for the last gift she granted to him. “And you’ll hear the whole of that tale, Robert. I promise.”

* * * *

Severus isn’t certain why he’s surprised that Hallowe’en 1980 is so much worse than every other Hallowe’en the Dark Lord “celebrated” throughout the course of the war. The Dark Lord has been angry, impatient, and volatile ever since the births of Neville Franklin Longbottom and Harry James Potter. Severus had seen the birth announcement in the newspaper during the first week of August and realized that Lily had allowed her child to be named for Henry Simon Potter, but she’d chosen the name most had known him by. Harry Potter of the Wizengamot, James Potter’s grandfather, was a good man whose death Severus still regrets, a figure who’d been respected even among Death Eaters. Severus hopes that Lily’s child takes after his great-grandfather. Sodding hell, he hopes Harry James Potter lives long enough to have even half a chance to do so.

“What the hell is going on?” Regulus asks Severus when they’re all abruptly called to a meeting of the Inner Circles. “Aside from the obvious, given the date.”

“I’ve no idea,” Severus replies. He’s been kept away from other Death Eaters, so unless it was repeated by the Inner Circles, rumors have been sparse things. Even then, he has still managed to bring information to the Order that has spared lives. Hallowe’en is the day he has been dreading, the day in which no warning or quarter is given.

“You’re all to go to the secluded magical portion of Bristol,” Voldemort tells them. “No witch or wizard in Bristol has seen fit to join us, so tonight, they will face the consequences. Go and tell the others where tonight’s festivities will begin.”

 _Fuck,_ Severus thinks, hiding his anger as he departs with the others of the Circles. Bristol isn’t like Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, or even the little wizarding enclaves that dot the countryside.

They’re used to being ignored by Wizarding Britain. They’re completely unprepared for what’s coming.

Severus can’t send word to the Order of the Phoenix until after the slaughter begins. His Patronus bounds off under the cover of smoke and terrified screaming.

Everyone is meant to be here in Bristol. Severus has to be seen participating.

None of these people deserve to die.

Severus steels himself, hates himself a bit more, and raises his wand. If he does not maintain his role as a spy, more will die than just the wizards of Bristol. He is caught in a trap he built for himself, and there is no way out but to continue forward.

To his well-hidden pleasure, Bristol rallies, much as Hogsmeade had done in 1975. Wizards and witches form a barricade of spells and bodies, using the tall and walled narrow entryway for magical Bristol to drive the Death Eaters back. Severus catches glimpses of Order members among them, and feels a brief moment of relief, knowing that his frantic message made it through.

Without magical targets to strike out at, the Death Eaters turn on the Muggles. “Goddammit!” Severus hisses, and tries to find someone else of the Innermost Circle within this mess. At the very least, this isn’t what the Dark Lord ordered them to do. He might— _might_ —be able to convince the others to withdraw based on that technicality, and on what the Dark Lord does of late to those who disobey.

Severus finds Nott, Selwyn Junior, Rowle, and Yaxley. The lesser members, those who are in the Innermost Circle due to their wealth and influence, not their intelligence. The Lestrange brothers, Bellatrix, Obsidian Rothschild, the Carrows, Avery Junior, Lucius, Rookwood—they’re not here. Neither is the Dark Lord.

He stands there for a moment, protected by a tree and a Shield Charm, shocked. As bad as this is, it’s nothing but a distraction. The real threat is elsewhere…and he has no idea where that could be. He can’t risk a second Patronus, not when there are Death Eaters sensitive to that sort of magic nearby. Fuck.

Severus Disillusions himself and darts into the smoke from burning and extinguished fires. Somehow, he finds an Order member who won’t instinctively kill him on sight, and grabs hold of Mundungus Fletcher. “It’s a fucking distraction!”

Fletcher finishes extinguishing a housefire and gives him a curious look. “Looks like it’s a real battle to me.”

Severus grinds his teeth. “I know! It’s meant to be. He’s in a fucking mood—who didn’t turn up to help?” he asks abruptly.

“Well, nobody that I saw…” Fletcher trails off, paling. “I’ll tell the others,” he snaps, and Disapparates.

Severus grips his wand, his throat tight. That will have to be enough. Fletcher doesn’t know how to bathe, and he drinks far too much, but he despises Voldemort.

Please let it be enough.

* * * *

Salazar swears in every language he can recall, cursing the Dark Lord in as many ways as he can think of that don’t involve using the bastard’s name. Please let him be on time. He has to be.

The McKinnon complex is already ablaze, its wards shattered beyond recognition. Salazar stares at the fire for a moment, enraged…and then he spies a wizard next to a very familiar ritual setup. They are cleaning up after themselves, erasing the lines and runes that channeled the power from the murder of an innocent.

Salazar Apparates again and slams into the wizard with the whole of his body. They both land on the ground in a hard sprawl, but Salazar is up first, his wand in one hand and a dagger in the other. “I’ve been looking for you for a _very_ long time,” he hisses.

The wizard looks up, ripping free a crooked Death Eater’s mask. Not a wizard, but a witch. Honora Yaxley Pucey, wife of the oft-annoying Constantine, daughter of Cornelius Yaxley, and mother to a small boy named Adrian. That is one child who could certainly do without the influence of his mother.

“Mundungus _Fletcher?_ ” Honora Pucey bursts out in angry disbelief. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting rid of you. Taking vengeance on behalf of all those who’ve been murdered thanks to your ways with wards!”

Honora Pucey throws back her head and laughs in unfeigned delight. “You? You barely rate above a Squib, Fletcher. Take yourself and get out of here, and perhaps I won’t inform the Dark Lord of your foolishness toni—”

Salazar gives her a bright smile. “It is very difficult to speak with a dagger in your throat, isn’t it?” he asks as Honora Pucey gasps, gags, and chokes. “I’ve found it quite the pain in the backside, myself, but fortunately I only endured it the once.”

Honora Pucey gurgles in rage and raises her wand. Salazar disarms her with a lazy flick of his own. “You’re lucky I’ve learned to be precise. I’ve cut through most of your windpipe and your vocal cords, as I truly wasn’t interested in listening to you babble any longer, but I made certain not to sever your spine. You aren’t yet bleeding to death, either.”

Salazar steps forward, and Honora Pucey stares him in the face, wide-eyed and furious. “How does it feel to be helpless, Honora Pucey? How does it feel, knowing that you are about to face the very same death you granted to every single one of your sacrifices?”

That gains her attention. Fury becomes brief confusion, and then fear. That allows Salazar to slide through her mental barriers to view the means and ways she prepared and tortured each of her sacrificial victims. “Oh. That’s very similar to the ritual necessary for the creation of a Horcrux. I wonder if that’s what gave you the idea?” Another slip and he has it, a collection of ancient family spells that only Honora had the patience to sort through and translate. It is, indeed, based on the creation of a Horcrux, at least in terms of the recognition of the vile power generated by sacrificial murder.

With another flick of his wand, Salazar freezes Honora Pucey in place. “I’ve wanted you dead for a very long time,” he whispers into her ear. “But after last Hallowe’en, I’ve spent a great deal of time hating you. That was my family you went after. My family you helped the Dark Lord to destroy.

“Never again, Honora Pucey. No other family will suffer that fate. No other innocents will be sacrificed by your hand.” Salazar pauses for a moment. “And after I burn down Yaxley Manor, where you were fool enough to leave that book and all of your notes, no one else will learn of this, either.”

 _I’ve taught others!_ Honora Pucey shouts in her mind. _You will not stop the Dark Lord from succeeding in his quest to purify Wizarding Britain!_

Salazar smiles, grips the front of her robe, and drags her so close their noses almost touch. “You’re a very bad liar. You are also so very fortunate that I do not have time to indulge in the revenge you deserve.” Then he shoves her back, releasing the immobilizing charm while reclaiming his dagger.

Honora Pucey stumbles but manages to remain upright. She uses a bit of wandless magic to heal the wound in her throat before it spills too much blood. “You’re nothing. Nobody,” she rasps. “You don’t have the stones to kill anyone, Fletcher.”

“No, he probably doesn’t. But I do.”

Honora Pucey finally seems to realize she isn’t just injured, but in true danger. “Who are you?”

“I am your death.” Salazar raises his wand. “I hope your son grows up to be less of an offence to the universe than I find you to be.”

* * * *

Regulus grimaces as Cornelius Yaxley’s screams emerge from the barrage of unending yellow light emerging from the Dark Lord’s wand. “HOW?” the Dark Lord howls. “HOW COULD YOU ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN?”

Regulus glances across the other two Circles to find Jewel Burke is standing in the Third Circle. She isn’t managing her usual expression of placid boredom today. Instead, she looks almost as gleeful as Bellatrix. If caught, Jewel will no doubt claim that she’s disliked Cornelius Yaxley for years, thinking him useless and thus deserving of the Dark Lord’s wrath.

He knows her now, though. Jewel isn’t taking delight in Yaxley’s suffering; she’s happy that Cornelius’s daughter, Honora Pucey, is dead. The Underground has been searching for the ward-breaker for a long time, and last night, while the McKinnon family homes burned to the ground, someone finally caught her.

Regulus had been a bit surprised to learn the ward-breaker’s identity. He hadn’t thought Honora to be that intelligent, or she would have found someone to marry who wasn’t as dimwitted as Constantine. Her parents would have preferred she marry an equal, or someone of greater importance who would have improved her standing in Wizarding Britain.

There hadn’t been much left of Honora, either. Whoever found her was in no mood to be merciful. Regulus didn’t get to see the mess, but heard Rabastan cackle as he said Honora Pucey had been left in the same condition as the woman she’d sacrificed to break the McKinnon Clan’s ancient wards. The laughter had earned Rabastan an extended bout of hexing and cursing by the Dark Lord, but Rabastan never really seems to mind.

Regulus, meanwhile, had considered finding a toilet to sick up into, or at least a sink basin. He knows what the ward-breaker did to her previous victims. He doesn’t feel much sympathy for Honora, but he also can’t stop _thinking_ about it.

Cornelius is finally released from the Cruciatus Curse. “I don’t…know!” he gasps. “I was…in Bristol! As my—as my Lord ordered!”

The Dark Lord sneers at Cornelius and subjects him to the curse again. “I am aware of that. I meant the destruction of your home. The place where Honora Pucey kept all of her work on breaking ancient wards. You let all of it burn to the ground, Cornelius!”

Regulus knows Cornelius didn’t have much of a say in that matter, but holds his tongue. After they investigated the remains of the manor, Severus came to the conclusion that someone must have set Fiendfyre loose within the Yaxley family library. Once that was unleashed, there was no stopping the fire, not until the manor was nothing but ash and cinders. Cornelius is lucky that his son Corban made it out of the manor alive.

He idly wonders if the Yaxley family was intelligent enough to insure their property with the goblins at Gringotts. Perhaps Constantine Pucey will feel charitable enough to take them in, though he’d be wiser to tell them to bugger off. The Yaxley family will be in poor standing with the Dark Lord for a very long time after this level of failure.

While Cornelius is left gasping, panting, and retching on the floor, the Dark Lord asks each member of every Circle if they witnessed anything of Honora Pucey’s fate. Regulus is glad no one from the Second Circle was told to accompany the Dark Lord to the McKinnon lands. He can honestly reply that he knew nothing of Honora’s fate until he returned with the others from Bristol.

By the time the Inner Circles are allowed to disperse, they’ve been in the Rothschild estate house for so long that the morning newspaper has arrived. Regulus discovers Severus sneering at the front page of the _Daily Prophet_. “They’re calling it the Western Slaughter,” Severus tells him, flicking the burning image of magical Bristol with his finger. “The McKinnons only rated the lower half of the newspaper.”

“Considering their numbers were the greater loss, that is uncouth,” Regulus says in a mild voice, quickly reading through the article. The Western Slaughter in Bristol resulted in forty-six dead wizards. Fifty-eight Muggles were also murdered during the raid. The Muggle authorities are being told that a housefire raged out of control, causing the rest of Bristol’s damage and the other deaths.

No one is claiming the McKinnons were any sort of accident. The _Daily Prophet_ doesn’t mention anything about the Dark Lord or Death Eaters, or even the blasted Dark Mark that must have hung in the sky, but the writing makes it clear who is responsible. Every single member of the magical McKinnon clan, including Order of the Phoenix members Marlene McKinnon and Mary MacDonald McKinnon, are dead.

Regulus reeks of Bristol’s smoke and blood. He still feels half-deaf from sirens and screams. Reading about the slaughter has renewed his desire to find the nearest place to sick up, but he can’t afford to show any sign of weakness right now, not with Bellatrix on the prowl.

Severus folds up the newspaper, scowling. “So much for the idea of preserving magical blood,” he mutters, but stalks away before Regulus can ask what he means.

He doesn’t need to ask, though. He already knows why Severus is angry. It’s why they were all stupid enough to get into this mess in the first place.

“Have you seen Saul?” Jewel asks Regulus after the house-elves start roaming around with trays of breakfast foods. The scent of cooked meat is really not helping to soothe his churning stomach.

Regulus shakes his head, glad for her subtle privacy charm. “No. Not since early morning yesterday. Why?”

“I haven’t seen him since he disguised himself as that fool, Fletcher, so as to be on the Order’s side of things for Hallowe’en,” Jewel murmurs. “Saul is usually prompt about making certain Trinity or Monica knows of his whereabouts after these events, but neither have heard from him. Trinity can’t leave London right now. Monica, Gwen, Sarah, Susan, Henry, and myself are trapped here for a few hours yet, for varying and irritating reasons. The others are also likewise occupied due to the events of last night. Can you go?”

Regulus nods. “I’m not expected to perform any other duties right now, not after my _exceptional_ performance yesterday.” There is no _might_ any longer regarding the need to vomit. He’ll do so after he’s gone from here. “When I find Saul, I’ll send you a message by Patronus, whinging about how badly my house-elf is acting of late when he should be crying with gratitude for serving the Dark Lord.”

“That is cruel,” Jewel observes.

“The horribleness of it all is that my family has conditioned Kreacher to think of that as _praise_ ,” Regulus says bitterly. Jewel grimaces in brief acknowledgement as she cancels the privacy charm. “My pardon, Madam Burke. I have business matters at home that must be attended to, but I’m certain we’ll speak again in a few days.”

He hopes they speak again in a few days. Regulus would prefer not being too deceased to do so.

“Of course, Lord Black,” Jewel replies, inclining her head to acknowledge that, technically, he is her senior in social status. He’s starting to hate these Pure-blood dances of power. Maybe after the war, he’ll stay in the Muggle world for a while. If he lives long enough.

Leicester is not far from Sherwood-on-the-Marsh. Regulus makes the journey in two stages of Apparition, as he uses his first landing to sick up somewhere in the midst of Sherwood Forest. That isn’t the sort of tribute to the legends he would prefer to offer, but better this than vomiting on his House Founder’s doorstep.

Regulus takes a moment to lean against the outside of the Willow House. He hasn’t really had time to dwell on learning about Saul. That he is also Salazar Slytherin is just—it’s impossible, and yet Regulus doesn’t doubt it at all.

It’s that locket. Slytherin’s Locket. Regulus spoke of it, and Saul promptly looked as if someone had just ripped his heart from his chest and crushed it beneath their boot heel. The man is a damned good spy, a master of mind and body, and still the Locket is so valuable to Saul that mere mention of it broke his self-control.

That could be faked, he’ll willingly admit, but Regulus grew up in Grimmauld Place and made it out alive. He knows when to trust his instincts, when someone is being true or false. Saul didn’t lie to him. Not about his true name, and not about how he was going to save Regulus’s ridiculous arse from countless Inferi.

Regulus straightens up, casts a charm to cleanse the sour taste from his mouth, and knocks. That he gets no answer isn’t much of a surprise. If Saul had a long night dealing with the Order, he might still be abed.

He waits a polite amount of time before gripping the warding stone that hangs from the door, the central piece of a windchime that jingles every time the door is opened or shut. The stone grows warm in his hand before the door unlocks and opens with a gentle click.

He enters the house and shuts the door behind him. The sitting room is brightly lit by the tall windows on both sides of the house, with no curtains or blinds to block out the sunshine. After days of rain, Regulus is suspicious of England granting them a sunny day, especially in November. The entryway of the Willow House grants him a view of the first part of the sitting room as well as the kitchen with its open workspace, illuminated by a skylight framed by old Tudor timbers. A separate table is set up for distilling certain potions, though it’s empty at the moment. Cauldrons hang from the wall, and from the iron rack above the central counter, where they share space with the cooking pans.

Before he met Saul, Regulus had never met _anyone_ who did their own cooking. Everyone his parents had allowed him to socialize with outside of school had house-elves of their own. He understands now that Severus must know how to cook, but Saul was the first person Regulus witnessed perform the act itself, and who provided the first meal Regulus ate that wasn’t prepared by house-elves. It made Regulus want to learn to cook, as it can’t be harder than Potions, but like many things he’s discovered he wants to learn, it will have to wait until after the war is over.

Regulus continues on through an open archway into the other half of the sitting room, which is where he finds Saul. He’s sitting in one of the armchairs, head tilted back, eyes closed. Regulus thinks he’s only asleep until he spies evidence that signifies that it’s far more likely that Saul passed out, instead. There are several empty bottles on the little table next to the armchair, all of them bearing labels for brewed magical liquor. An empty crystal glass is clasped loosely in Saul’s left hand, while his right hand is curled up on the other armrest, just next to his wand.

Saul is far too pale for a man who is supposed to be bronze-skinned, and there is a visible spray of dried blood on his face. His fingers are stained dark with it. Even Saul’s cherrywood wand has hints of dried blood spatter.

“You never sleep through someone entering this house. What did you go and do?” Regulus wonders quietly, plucking the glass free of Saul’s lax hand to place on the table next to the empty liquor bottles.

That’s when he hears the noise again, the strange hissing that had interrupted his first conversation with Saul. Regulus looks up and finds Nizar Slytherin staring back at him from a portrait frame, one eyebrow raised in obvious expectation.

“Professor?”

Nizar tilts his head and then begins signing, the same hand language that Regulus learned in the Slytherin Common Room. “It’s still weird to be called that. Yes, I’m Nizar, but much younger than the version I imagine you’re used to speaking with.”

Regulus glances down at Saul before replying in sign, deciding it might be best to keep things quiet. Jewel and Monica both complain often that Saul rarely sleeps. “Nice to meet another portrait of you, then. I was wondering who was meant to be in these empty portrait frames. What did Saul do?”

“Drank himself into unconsciousness. He’s lucky he can’t die of it,” Nizar responds, visibly unimpressed. “It takes a lot of alcohol to take down a Spaniard, and he managed it.”

“Why?”

The portrait sighs. “Because he found the ward-breaker last night.”

Regulus sucks in a breath. “Honora Pucey.” The bloodstains now make perfect sense.

“That would be her.”

“She was, er…” Regulus glances at Saul’s blood-stained hands again. “She was apparently turned into quite a mess. Left in the same state as her last victim, whoever they were. I imagine this means you know about the McKinnons, too.”

“Yes, we do.” The portrait tilts his head, the mannerism so familiar that Regulus feels himself relaxing a bit. “Did my brother tell you that the Potters were family?”

Regulus’s eyes widen in surprise. “No! He hadn’t said a word. Granted, he’d only just told me the day before Hallowe’en who he really is, so the Potters weren’t the sort of thing that would’ve come up yet.” He frowns. “The Potter family is Gryffindor-descended though, weren’t they? Aren’t they?” he amends, remembering that James Potter is still alive.

Not only is James still alive, he married Sirius. James is now his brother-in-law, and Lily Evans is his sister-in-law. God, that hasn’t stopped being weird. Regulus is used to the idea of James and Sirius being friends, but a triad marriage, and with a Muggle-born witch! If Uncle Pollux found out—

They were wise to hide their tri-marriage. Not only would Sirius have been disinherited at once, Pollux Black would have declared a feud against the Potters and the Evans families for “corrupting” Sirius with impure blood, and it wouldn’t have stopped until one side or the other was dead.

“Their branch of the Potter family began with a daughter of Godric and a close cousin of myself and my brother. You could argue that the Gryffindor blood outweighs the Slytherin, but since Henry Potter’s father was a Parselmouth, I say one is no more important than the other.”

“That’s fascinating—wait. Parseltongue! That’s what I’ve been hearing,” Regulus realizes, feeling like an idiot. “You rarely demonstrated it in the Common Room. I think you knew the others wouldn’t care for it.”

“No, I doubt they would. Too many of them dwell on their fears, and those fears include Salazar—which I find hilarious, by the way,” the portrait says. “Come out to the kitchen. I have another frame out there, and we should let my idiot brother rest.”

“I should…” Regulus gestures at the blood.

Nizar shakes his head. “That would be enough to wake him. It isn’t as if the blood is going anywhere, Regulus Black.”

“Regulus is—just Regulus is fine,” he responds. It’s odd to give that permission to the same person twice, even if he’s dealing with an entirely separate portrait.

Nizar smiles and disappears. Regulus takes the hint and goes back out into the bright kitchen, breathing in the scent of herbs drying in long wooden racks overhead. Saul must have taken a rare opportunity before Hallowe’en to collect the rest of his herb garden’s harvest; most of what is drying was collected only a few days ago. The gourds are most likely still out in the vegetable patch, waiting to be gathered.

The portrait frame above the brewing table emits a serpent’s hiss before Nizar appears again. “Better,” he signs. “Or at least it’s brighter.”

With better lighting, it’s easier to see that this portrait of Nizar Slytherin is much paler than the one Regulus knew at Hogwarts. His hair is a solid dark brown that appears black, like Saul’s would be without the silver threads of age that grace his temples. Merlin, this version of Nizar is _young_.

“Why do you not speak English?” Regulus asks. “Or any human tongue, for that matter?”

“I can’t,” Nizar replies, hissing the words even as he signs them. “This portrait was made to hang within Hogwarts, and I’ve been away from her since the year 1039. The Willow House is atop a strong magical node, and that preserved me for a very long time, but the magic of the painting started to break down without my notice. I only discovered it when I went searching for a recorded memory of a potion and found that it didn’t exist any longer. Language was degrading, too. I switched over to speaking only Parseltongue, and that’s kept the memory loss from getting worse, but…” The portrait wriggles his fingers. “We did have to learn an alternative for those who don’t understand Parseltongue. I like it. British sign language is useful.”

Regulus pauses in the midst of starting his next sign. “Wait,” he says aloud. “British sign language. This is a Muggle invention, isn’t it?”

“So is opening your mouth and letting words fall out,” Nizar signs, a dry expression on his face. “So is the English language, or any other language on this planet.”

“Nobody knows, though,” Regulus says. “This is commonly taught in the Slytherin Common Room. Even Severus knows some of it, though I don’t know if he paid enough attention to learn all of it before he left in 1977. Slytherins use it to talk to the Merfolk in the lake, and to each other.”

Nizar grins. “I wonder how a Muggle invention, a relatively new language, could have made its way into the Slytherin Common Room, realm of the Pure-bloods. Oh, but wait! Snape’s a Half-blood! How could that Sorting possibly have happened?”

Regulus stares at the portrait for a solid minute. “I feel really, really stupid right now.”

“You’re nineteen years old. You’re allowed,” the portrait replies.

“There are Muggle-borns in Slytherin. I thought Severus was just a rare exception, that his blood from the Prince line convinced the Sorting Hat, but…” Regulus thinks on the students he knew who would demur when asked to discuss their families. Every excuse was proper, something a Pure-blood would say. Requests for privacy, families that wished to remain neutral with a conflict brewing—all of it made sense. All of it was the desperation of Half-blood and Muggle-born Slytherins trying to remain unnoticed by Pure-blood fanatics who might literally have tried to kill them in their beds.

“No, I mean, I feel _really_ stupid. Your portrait…you told me not to join You-Know-Who, at least not at first. You suggested I spend six months at home after graduating, and if I still felt the same way afterwards, then have at it. But I didn’t. I thought for so long that I was doing the right thing, and I just…”

“Regulus.” Nizar’s portrait smiles. “You figured it out. You stepped away from what _he_ offered. You looked beyond what was presented and saw the truth, all on your own. That portrait would fucking well be proud of you. I know that I am.”

“How—I mean—” Regulus struggles to find the right words. “Why would it matter if you’re proud of me? Not that it isn’t encouraging to hear, mind you. I do appreciate it.”

“Why would it matter?” The portrait sits back in a chair that Regulus could have sworn wasn’t in the portrait a moment ago. “To hear that answer, you first have to retrieve a Horcrux from a magical deathtrap.”


	30. Puzzle Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Killing Honora Pucey and then burning down the Yaxley Estate wasn’t nearly enough to balance those scales. He’ll bear it, somehow, and settle for saving James Potter and Lily Black Potter._
> 
> __Somehow._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flail-read-cheered by @norcumii (who enjoyed her birthday very much).
> 
> In the meantime: Buckle up, dears. Here's where the fun begins.
> 
> (No, really, I mean it. Look, just because it's also a bucketful of FEELS...)

Salazar wakes up to a voice in his kitchen. He grabs one of three litre bottles on the side table. Two are empty; the third is nearly empty of vodka. Salazar stares at it, and then picks up the tumbler sitting on the table. He didn’t drink that much. Probably.

He collects his wand and then opens the cabinet by hand when he discovers his head is pounding too painfully to manage a charm. He is completely out of vodka. Yes, he really did drink that much. Godric would be impressed. Possibly terrified.

Salazar comes out to sign-read _magical deathtrap_ and sighs. “Stop teasing the man, Nizar.”

Robert squeaks in surprise and looks set to fling himself through the nearest window. “Why are you awake?” he gasps out, hand over his heart, as if the gesture itself will convince the recalcitrant organ to calm down.

“Because I am not currently unconscious,” Salazar responds. “Nizar, that sounded like the presented hero’s quest for a horrible film.”

“It’s fine.” Robert stares at him. “You…er…you look…”

“Gods-awful?” Salazar suggests, rummaging around in his cabinets with a fierce scowl. “I am so bloody hungover right now. I’d even drink that slop Severus Snape calls Tolerantu to feel better, and that’s including the fact that I’d have to sick it up afterwards.”

“ _Hung over? More like alcohol poisoning_ ,” Nizar hisses, laughing.

“No, it’s not fucking alcohol poisoning!” Salazar retorts. “Oh, gods. Please tell me I am not out of hangover cure. I might actually weep.”

Salazar is out of hangover cure. He drinks a massive amount of water from the tap, tells Robert to have at the coffee or tea, if there is any remaining, and goes to drown his sorrows in a shower. Possibly he also weeps while standing there, but the hangover isn’t to blame.

He picks up a bristled sponge, adds more soap, and begins scrubbing dried blood from his hands. If he’d caught Honora Pucey sooner, Henry, Elizabetha, Monty, Euphemia, the cousins—they might all be alive. The McKinnons, too, for that matter.

Fuck, _why?_ Why did it happen only after all of that death?

Killing Honora Pucey and then burning down the Yaxley Estate wasn’t nearly enough to balance those scales. He’ll bear it, somehow, and settle for saving James Potter and Lily Black Potter.

Somehow. He’ll succeed at it somehow. Even if he still is only certain of his ability to save one, not both.

Salazar is still angry as he scrubs bloodstains off of his wand. That woman had best not have been diseased. He doesn’t have time to brew up and then consume the number of potions it takes to counter that sort of thing, not right now.

Back in the kitchen, Robert found tea and brewed it while Salazar was in the shower. Salazar is relieved to discover that he remembered to leave himself the next measure of coarsely ground coffee for the French press in a sealed jar. He pours it in the press, giving his kettle a good tap so the water will boil. Then he waits, counting down from sixty, before pouring the water into the press.

“Well, I just learned to use a French press. That might be useful if I could ever become heathen enough to enjoy coffee,” Robert says.

“Bloody English,” Salazar mutters, adding a single grain of salt and a pinch of sugar to the coffee before stirring it. “How was your night and morning, then?”

“Appalling,” Robert replies. If there is a steady gleam of contemplative steel in his eyes, Salazar will not be the one to point it out. “So was the morning newspaper. They’re calling what happened on the coast The Western Slaughter of 1980.”

“I’m sure the dead will appreciate knowing that their murders were granted a fancy title.” Salazar rubs his face and then refuses to speak again until he’s started the process of replacing the remaining alcohol in his blood with caffeine and bitterness. “If you’d planned to return to You-Know-Who’s lot today, don’t.”

Robert raises an eyebrow. “You want to fetch that thing tonight?”

“Why not? At least tonight is not right now. I despise right now. After midnight is a much more pleasant concept at the moment.”

“True.” Robert frowns. “You’re worried about something going wrong?”

“We’re only retrieving a Horcrux from a cursed fountain in the midst of a lake surrounded by hundreds of Inferi,” Salazar responds. Robert gives him a look of polite disbelief. “I’m actually more concerned about Bellatrix. Do you think she would be overly concerned if the body she left on your brother’s doorstep on the third day of November was already rotting?”

Robert grimaces. “No, I don’t think she would mind at all. You think she would break pattern just to do such a thing?”

“Pattern? What pattern?” Salazar asks crossly. “In case it has somehow escaped your notice, your cousin is a madwoman. Mad people do not have patterns, they have knives.”

“You’re very tetchy when you’ve had too much to drink the night before,” Robert observes.

“And?”

“Just thought I would point it out, in case it had escaped your notice.” Robert smiles innocently when Salazar glares at him. Nizar’s portrait is hissing loudly, laughter that trails off into silence as he stumbles away from this portrait frame to seek another.

It is rather nice to know what Robert has no plans to discard his flippant ways just because Salazar is over one thousand years old. He Summons a box, which he then hands to Robert. “Here.”

Robert opens the box with a Pure-blood’s caution, promptly abandoned when he discovers what it holds. He pulls out the recreated locket and lets the chain hang from his long fingers, watching the faceted emeralds catch and reflect the light. “We’ve had almost no time at all. How did you have this crafted so quickly?”

“I’m an Earth-Speaker,” Salazar replies. “I finished it before I was too pissed to comprehend language any longer.”

“Earth-Speaker. You mean you just called forth the materials and…Transfigured them afterwards?” Robert asks.

Salazar nods. “For me, the Transfiguration is more difficult.”

Robert lifts the latch and frowns at the open locket. “Empty.”

“I have no desire to put a copy of my second wife’s portrait into a cursed fountain created by that fucking Dark Lord,” Salazar says in a flat voice. “This will have to do. But for the portrait’s lack, it’s a perfect copy. Don’t lose it.”

“I’d lose my wand before I lose this. Giving this locket to the fountain in place of whatever is in there might be the only way to cause it to refill itself after I drink that shite, and I still have no idea if that would placate the Inferi.” Robert puts the locket back into its box and then tucks the box into his inner robe pocket. “I’m really not looking forward to this. You’re right, though. Even without worrying about Bellatrix, better to do it tonight than wait. I think might lose my nerve if I dwell on this too long.”

Salazar makes another cup of coffee from the press before he asks, “What has happened in your life that you would so readily accept my existence?”

Robert’s eyes drop down from his curious perusal of Salazar’s drying racks. “My mother married her first cousin once removed, and our family thus forgot how to fork. Sirius and I are brothers, first cousins twice removed, second cousins once or twice removed—that one is a pain in the arse— _and_ we’re third cousins. My childhood was terrifying. Aunt Cassiopeia is vicious and far too fond of poisoning children. I was punished if I ever breathed a word of Uncle Marius because he’s a Squib, so I know nothing about him. I don’t even know his age, as Uncle Pollux burnt him off the family tree.”

“He lives in Belgium,” Salazar says, to Robert’s obvious surprise. “Marius is now sixty-two years old, likely still married to a Belgian Squib witch named Amandine Maes. They had two children together, Jacinthe and Gabin Black, both magical and likely to have attended Beauxbatons. It’s been a very long time since I’ve heard any news of their family. Your Aunt Dorea was the one who corresponded with them the most. She wasn’t able to meet your uncle Marius and his family until Iola Black Hitchens’s funeral, but I know Dorea and Charles met with them several times after that, most often in France.”

“Iola Mae Black. Yet another name burnt from the family tree.” Robert shakes his head. “Great-aunt and great-great-aunt both, and I know nothing about her, but the Hitchens family—they’ve been recently recognized as a new Pure-blood magical family, haven’t they?”

“Half-blood Robert Hitchens, Iola’s son, wed Amber Rothschild—Obsidian Rothschild’s eldest sister.”

Robert bursts out laughing. “I can’t stand that bastard! That serves him right.”

Salazar smiles. “I thought so, also. What else, then?”

“Well…the generational lines in my family are so buggered that even I have trouble remembering how many different ways I’m related to the same people. Mother burnt Sirius and Uncle Alphard off the family tree—Sirius for leaving, and Alphard for helping him do it. She made me watch, and she laughed while she did it, as if erasing Sirius’s name erased _him_.”

“Your mother might be a bit mad,” Salazar says.

Robert sighs and nods. “Most likely. I—I used to blame Sirius for that, though. I believed it was his fault. I thought that if he’d just fallen in line with what the family wanted, everything would be fine. It wouldn’t be, though.”

“Likely not, no.”

“I’m named for a Black you said was a good man, but I never met the first Regulus. I only have vague memories of Aunt Lycoris. Uncle Arcturus isn’t around much, for obvious reasons,” Robert says. “I’m surprised Uncle Pollux or Mother hasn’t burnt him off the family tree now that Father isn’t around to stop them.” He smiles. “It would be nice to meet Cousin Lucretia. I know from rumor that she’s a vicious Auror.”

“And an excellent example of a Black woman, for all that her name is now Prewett. After the war, perhaps,” Salazar suggests. “Then you might also meet your Uncle Arcturus, along with Lucretia’s son Henry and his wife, Joy Dunbar, and their child, Henry Junior. He is four years old, and yes, magical.”

“Perhaps,” Robert agrees, a shadow of lingering doubt in his eyes. “I met Aunt Dorea several times, though never Uncle Charlus. He wasn’t allowed to enter Grimmauld Place. I always thought that was odd. Later, I thought it was rather stupid. Besides, I wasn’t allowed to socialize with Aunt Dorea enough to know what she was like beyond her display of good manners. Uncle Alphard might be the only Black in my family I really knew well, and who I liked, but when Bellatrix killed him, I thought, ‘He must have done something to deserve it. She would never have done that to a member of our family unless his crime was unforgivable.’ But it wasn’t that at all. She’s just…mad. Foul.”

“Cygnus and Druella?” Salazar asks. The discussion of family seems to be helping Robert to focus less on his potential death.

“Uncle Cygnus is…well, he’s just like his father, really,” Robert replies. “Aunt Druella, she isn’t that bad. She isn’t necessarily _nice_ , but I knew I could trust her not to poison me.”

“I was always left with the impression that Druella had a bit more sense than her husband, though I’ve not seen much of her since the war began.”

“I imagine Uncle Cygnus and Uncle Pollux are forcing her to keep her opinions to herself. I don’t think she’s fond of the Dark Lord,” Robert says. “What’s…what is my cousin Andromeda like?”

“Andromeda Black Tonks is a Slytherin. The right sort of Slytherin,” Salazar replies. “She keeps much to herself, as does Narcissa, but without the chill your other cousin insists upon. Andromeda loves her husband, Ted, and their daughter Nymphadora is precious to them both.”

Robert smiles. “Nymphadora Tonks, the Metamorphmagus. Those two must have unique child-rearing stories. She’s eight years old now. Three years until Hogwarts. First September, 1983, and I have no idea who she is.”

“Robert. You’ll see it,” Salazar tells him. “Even if it is only from a distance, you will live to see that day come to pass.”

“I—I know, but all of that is part of my point, Saul. Sirius and I are fighting on opposite sides of a war led by a madman who not only can’t die, but is so terrified of an _infant_ that he wants to murder my brother’s son just to prove a point. I’m about to retrieve a Horcrux guarded by a horrific mess of a potion and literally hundreds of Inferi. I live in a world full of unicorns, giants, bloody Nicholas Flamel, witches, wizards, enchanters, Veela, centaurs, man-eating spiders, Animagi, a Metamorphmagus cousin, and werewolves. A Founder of Hogwarts turning up in my life, not being dead? You’re not exactly that out of place,” Robert finishes.

Salazar sips his coffee, bemused. “You’re saying your life is already so complicated that I’m scarcely a complication at all.”

Robert shrugs. “No offence. As long as you didn’t use a Horcrux to live this long—”

“Absolutely not,” Salazar growls.

“Oh.” Robert raises both eyebrows. “Anything _like_ a Horcrux, then?”

Salazar rests his hand over his heart, a gesture of promise used often by the Pure-blood set in the previous century. “Never.”

“Very well. I’m off to have a nap, then. I have a cursed potion to drink before I present my backside as bait for Inferi.”

Salazar grins. “No wonder Nizar is so fond of you. You’re prim, proper, and secretly insane.”

Robert smiles while shaking his head. “No, I’m just stupid.”

* * * *

The cave is in one of the reserves on the coast, east of London, part of a small collection of rocks that aren’t quite big enough to qualify as islands. Robert shows them to Salazar from the mainland.

Salazar shades his eyes with his hand, cutting out the glare of an autumn sun that is giving it one more go at blinding the populace before it sets. “I know those rocks. I remember them. They’re not supposed to be hidden from Muggles that way.”

“Maybe not, but they are now. I asked a local, faking the absolute worst American accent imaginable, and they laughed at the idea that there was anything out here in The Swale at all,” Robert says. He takes hold of Salazar’s arm and Apparates them again. “If you come here at high tide, it’s underwater, all of it. With the tide going out, midnight should be just about perfect. The door would be…there,” he points. “You can’t see it, but that’s because you literally have to swim to it from here, or you’ll never find it.”

“Oh, the bastard decided to copy one of Myrddin’s tricks. I hate him even more,” Salazar mutters. “It’s bloody November, Robert.”

“Warming charms exist, you relic.”

Salazar decides to gallantly ignore that, at least until they’ve swum the distance from one rocky outcropping to another. The door of plain, wide stone is visible when they climb out of the ocean, looking like the entrance to a tomb. Appropriate.

He waits until Robert has dried himself and then directs a wave to surge up over the stone and soak him again. “You complete pillock!” Robert sputters.

“Relics are old bones of saints, and I am neither,” Salazar responds in the prim tone Robert uses among other Death Eater Pure-bloods, and gets soaked anew for it. He laughs; he hadn’t been fool enough to dry off yet.

Bloody hell, it’ll take weeks to get all of this sand out of his trainers.

Robert dries off again, glares at Salazar, and then smears a bit of fresh blood across that smooth slab of rock. It creates a silver archway that vanishes most of the rock entirely, leaving them with a damp, dark path that takes them to an equally damp, slimy boat. The very small boat, large enough for two people to stand in if they balance well, is strung on an algae-green copper chain that stretches from the wall to the center of the cave. “It’s normally underwater, all of it hidden,” Robert explains. “I left the boat out after Kreacher and I came here. No sense hauling it out of the water over and over, I thought.”

The trip across the lake, pulled by the enchanted copper chain, is eerie. It’s far too quiet in the cave. The glow coming from the magic-crafted fountain in the center of the room casts just enough light for Salazar to see the hinted outlines of bodies below the still surface of the water. Not even the boat disturbs it, leaving no wake as it floats along.

“Disturbing the water would be one of the triggers, then. The first means of protection,” Salazar murmurs, and Robert nods. “The Inferi will make off with anyone who dares the lake without the boat, just as they will make off with anyone daring to take the fountain’s contents, and the Horcrux would be even more well-hidden than before.”

“I would be a lot less inclined to disturb a nest of Inferi,” Robert agrees, expression pulled up in fear-tinged distaste.

The boat remains stable as they get out, not even rocking back and forth in the water as a normal boat should. Salazar circles the fountain, which is entirely natural aside from its construction. It’s the potion within that is disturbing. It glows with a bright green light—the Killing Curse captured in liquid form.

“I’ve brewed the Draught of Despair before. I only used it the once, but I’ve brewed it,” Salazar begins to say, but Robert looks horrified.

“This? You’ve used _this?_ ”

“Not this exactly,” Salazar corrects. “That is what I mean, and your Aunt Cassiopeia wasn’t nearly as good as she believes herself to be if you didn’t already notice the differences for yourself. You noticed the difference in color already, but the original draught doesn’t self-replenish, and that magic of replenishment isn’t built into the stone of this fountain. That means the self-replenishing aspect is a new part of the potion. Worse, it was tested on a house-elf. They react differently to certain potions than humans. It could have yet another trait that we don’t yet know of.”

“Well…fuck,” Robert says.

“Aptly stated.” Salazar retrieves an empty phial from his jacket, dips it into the fountain, and comes out with…nothing. “Oh, you are a sly fucking bastard when it suits you, aren’t you?”

Robert looks green. Salazar genuinely cannot tell if it is caused by the cursed potion, or by fear-induced nausea. “What should we do?”

“I’m altering the Protean Charm. You can still grasp it, if you’ve sense left enough to do so, but I am also making certain it will alert me if you are in mortal danger.”

“Then it is going to be alerting you from the moment I step into that boat with Kreacher after midnight,” Robert says.

Salazar glances at the boat in question. “No. The potion isn’t a mortal threat. It’s what will rise out of that water when you disturb the Horcrux.”

It almost doesn’t work.

Salazar waits on a rocky outcropping just outside the cave, wanting desperately to pace out his nerves but having nowhere to go. He is under his brother’s Cloak, the only way to hide himself from an elf’s sight. Scrying only avails him a hint of the cave and its green light, just as it has _always_ done, a hint no one would be able to recognize save for the Dark Lord himself.

The Protean Charm, an altered copper two-pence, is one of many that still turn up inside the Willow House. Robert is wearing its twin on a leather cord around his neck. Other than waiting for the charm to warm in Salazar’s hand, there is no way to know how things are proceeding inside the cave.

When the Protean Charm finally alerts him to Robert’s danger, he reacts at once. Salazar calls upon the earth and burrows through the side of the cave wall in the thinnest point he found during earlier explorations. At the midway point, he ducks aside as a magical ward explodes outward, attempting to stop him. Salazar rolls his eyes. That ward would have been enough to stop someone burrowing a tunnel through typical magical means, but it will not stop an Earth-Speaker.

Robert isn’t at the base of the fountain. He’s lying near the edge of the lake. The hands of three Inferi are already upon him.

One cannot Apparate out of the cave, but they can Apparate within it. Salazar is across the vastness of the lake in an instant. “ _¡Quemar!_ ”

The Inferi trying to drag Robert into the water screech in despair and agony as their arms burst into flames. Salazar grabs Robert, who is either unconscious or delirious, and yanks him back towards the fountain. All of the Inferi are rising now, and dear gods, there are hundreds of them. For the only time in his long life, Salazar wishes his strength had been for all of the elements rather than one alone. Fire would come to him easier, and it is fire he needs now.

Salazar snarls and hoists Robert up and over his shoulder, chancing a glance into the fountain while setting another of the Inferi on fire. There is a glint of gold at the bottom, reassurance that the locket replica was placed in its new home, and then he has time for nothing else.

The cave is full of smoke, the stench of burning bodies, of rot and polluted water, by the time Salazar makes it back to his carved entrance. He thinks Robert is still breathing; he hopes so. His one glimpse of Robert’s face showed a young man who looked as if he was on the verge of death, but they’ll both die if Salazar lingers in this cave to find out for certain.

He gets them both out, sealing the cave entrance behind him. The rock is far more willing to come back together than it was to be dragged apart. Salazar drops to his knees, gasping for breath. Gods, but he never wants to do anything like that ever again!

These islands must remain hidden. No one needs to be out for a holiday on the beach and come across a horde of magical fucking zombies.

Robert is still breathing, moaning incomprehensibly. Salazar leans close and nearly loses skin to Robert’s frantic fingernails. The only word he is saying, over and over again, is, “Water.”

“Unquenchable thirst.” Salazar hoists Robert up over his shoulder again, hoping perhaps that Robert will vomit up some of the draught after the Apparition is done. It wasn’t only disturbing the Horcrux that would have gained Inferi attention, something that would have ceased after Robert dropped the fake locket into the fountain. The potion’s other new trait would have ensured the thief marched straight to the lake to slake their thirst—straight into the arms of the Inferi. Robert delayed, though, needing time to convince Kreacher to leave him to his fate. He was at the shore’s edge, not fighting his way into the water to drink from it. That delay probably saved Robert’s life.

Robert does indeed sick up part of the potion, leaving a bright green, poisonous-looking puddle on the stone path leading to Salazar’s door. He hopes it will help offset some of the delirium, and perhaps keep Robert from attempting to drown himself.

Providing Robert with water turns into an immediate game of tug-of-war over the cup. He would mindlessly consume an ocean in this state, but Salazar would rather that much water not be vomited throughout the Willow House.

“A draught meant for nothing but despair wasn’t enough?” Salazar wonders aloud as he fights Robert through this cursed thirst. He hopes Voldemort only applies himself to potions when he has need, because this is a terrible thing.

No. This isn’t Voldemort’s work. Not something this precise in what it does, how it works. Voldemort asked Severus Snape to craft this sort of potion, or challenged him to make the Draught of Despair worse, to turn it into a trap from without as well as within.

Severus Snape would despise himself if he were ever to find out that he caused Regulus Black’s death. He wouldn’t let Robert’s survival stop him from lashing himself with that emotion, either, not when he would know exactly what Robert suffered through.

It’s the work of long, careful hours to guide Robert along, getting him through the last of that particular side-effect without sickness. Then comes the anguish, the despair the potion was originally meant to create. Salazar is glad he already knew of Robert’s actions from his first months as a Death Eater, or this would be a terrible confession to hear. The deaths are bad, but worse is the choked sobbing of a young man who realized the first time he lifted his wand that he didn’t want to murder another. He’d thought only of fighting on the front lines, Slytherins and proper wizards against Muggle-lovers and Dumbledore’s foolish Phoenix lot. Not once, even when Regulus Black heard the words stated before he received the Mark, did he realize there would be times when Voldemort would require death that was cold-blooded, that served no purpose but another’s entertainment.

 _You poor fool_ , Salazar thinks, trying to get a Calming Draught down a stubborn Black’s throat. It’s not the first time he’s heard that sort of story, and he doubts it will be the last.

Salazar doses Robert with Dreamless Sleep when the confession begins to wind down. He doesn’t want that sort of anguish to follow the man into sleep. Robert did well tonight, a brilliant display of the bravery that always lurks behind a true Slytherin’s cunning. He deserves the chance to rest.

In the meantime, Salazar will not be resting. He tries listening to a new album purchase, _Deepest Purple_ , but gives up on it after a few tracks. Others will just have to despise his taste, but Deep Purple still doesn’t appeal. He replaces it with _The Dark Side of the Moon_ and goes into the kitchen to sort through herbs, singling out what has already dried and what needs to be rearranged.

Jewel Burke remains the only person Salazar knows of among the Death Eaters who turned her unwillingness to murder another into a slight Voldemort made against her with his demand that she kill an innocent. She used skillful, cold words to remind the Dark Lord of her place in wizarding society, and how she was above such mundane things. Give her an enemy worthy of her wand, Jewel had said, and there would be a body at once. Voldemort, not wanting to lose access to the Burke family coffers, had smiled his humorless smile and stated that he looked forward to providing her with just such a victim.

She still hates that it was a member of her own family, a Talbot cousin, who finally earned the privilege. Justina Talbot was one of the young ones who pledged themselves to Voldemort and realized soon after that they’d made a foolish choice. She maintained excellent mental shielding, playing her hand so close it was invisible to all but her. If the Underground had discovered Justina Talbot’s intentions even a mere five minutes previous, they might have been able to save her.

Robert sleeps through the entire day of second November. He wakes briefly, disoriented and confused, wondering where in the hell the nearest toilet might be. Salazar, amused, steers him in the correct direction and reminds him that it might be wiser to sit rather than attempt to aim when he can barely make out his own hands in front of his face. Robert tells him off, washes his hands and face, and borrows a toothbrush to get “Whatever horror I ingested” cleansed from his mouth. He then falls right back into bed, asleep again with no potion needed.

“That does make this a bit easier for me, then,” Salazar tells his unconscious houseguest. With Robert already tied into the wards through his home’s founding stone, it is a relatively simple matter to remove him from Wizarding Britain’s perception entirely. No Black house-elf will be able to find their missing young master. The family tree inside Grimmauld Place will reflect that absence. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Regulus Arcturus Black II died today, third November 1980.

The next day, around mid-morning, Robert begins making distressed sounds in his sleep. Salazar goes into the bedroom to find Robert still asleep, but his right hand is clamped around the Dark Mark. Voldemort is trying to Summon him.

Salazar cheats his way past that Summons as best he can, dosing Robert again with Dreamless Sleep, followed by one of the strongest pain-killing potions he can brew. Robert is now all but comatose, beyond the reach of the pain the Mark can cause. It will stop when Voldemort becomes frustrated enough to call upon Kreacher. Given the Dark Lord’s lack of patience of late, Salazar doesn’t think that will take very long.

He is proven correct an hour later. Regulus Black is _never_ late when Summoned, and such an out-of-character act would have driven Voldemort to seek any alternate means of finding Robert that did not involve death. To kill Robert would be to lose the favor of the Black family patriarch, and thus lose him access to the vast Black family fortune.

Jewel comes to the Willow House that evening, frantic and doing her best to control the emotion. “Saul,” she whispers, her mouth taut with distress. “It’s Regulus. He’s—”

“—right here,” Salazar finishes, gripping Jewel’s hands and letting her hold on to express her relief. “He isn’t dead, but it became necessary to make everyone else believe it so.”

Jewel breathes out a long, steady sigh as she regains her sense of poise. “That is good to hear. I’ve grown fond of the young idiot. What happened?”

Salazar thinks he might need to grab hold of Jewel’s hands to steady himself as the full weight of what was done crashes down on him. “We did it. We found and retrieved one of the bastard’s Horcruxes.”

“One.” Jewel’s eyes widen. “One of the five.”

“Which is still better than our previous count of none,” Salazar says. “Robert nearly died to retrieve it. If he hadn’t made the attempt, though, Bellatrix was plotting to murder him. She had her heart set on it already.”

“That utter twit.” Jewel snorts in disgust. “I loathe that woman, I truly do.”

Salazar allows Jewel to see Robert, who has tangled the sheet around his legs while wrapping the quilt around his arms and chest. The potions are definitely wearing off, but Robert needed the extra rest.

“What should I say to the others?” Jewel asks.

“Trinity and Monica can know. Otherwise…” Salazar trails off. “For anyone who didn’t yet know that Robert Allan Black and Regulus Black are the same man, that is the way it must remain.”

“I believe the only other one of us who knew of Regulus Black’s participation is Gwen. I’ll let the three of them know.”

“Thank you, Jewel.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Jewel takes one final glimpse at Robert, quirking an eyebrow as he abruptly flops over from his back to his stomach, and backs away from the bedroom. “I’ve bad news for you regarding the Underground and Hallowe’en.”

Salazar closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I was occupied, and then very much not sober afterwards. Did I miss something I should not have?”

“No. The message was sent only to Trinity. I think Amy suspected that Trinity would be the most likely of all of us to be alone—or if not entirely alone, in trustworthy company instead of being surrounded by Death Eaters.” Jewel’s expression softens. “We lost Lisa Hornbeak.”

“Godsdammit.” Salazar lets his head fall back, puts the walls of his Mind Magic into their proper places to repair his scattered sense of the last few days, and then nods. “Tell me.”

“Lisa was Marlene McKinnon,” Jewel says. Salazar swears aloud and nearly punches the closest wall. “Only Amy and Henry knew of her participation. The Order of the Phoenix had no idea, which is how Amy says Lisa preferred it, but…”

“We’ll have our own memorial for her, after the chaos of the McKinnon family’s loss has died down. The Winter Solstice, perhaps,” Salazar says, resisting the urge to swear again. Or to drink again—and he can’t repeat that stunt he pulled after dealing with Honora Pucey. He was in honest-to-gods distress, but he leads this Underground. They need him to be competent, not unconscious.

“Do the others know of Lisa’s fate?” Salazar asks when he is certain he’s calmed himself.

Jewel nods. “Most of them. You’re the one who usually speaks to Annette, so we’ve left that to you. Geoff and Elsa are still new enough to the Underground to be shocked that anyone from the Order would want anything to do with us.”

“If they had one last bit of adjusting to do to understand our purpose, they’ve been granted it, but gods, I’d prefer it had been in any other fashion.”

After Salazar sees Jewel to the door, he returns to the bedroom to find Robert siting up, blinking in confusion. “Did I hear voices aside from yours?”

“Jewel was here.” Salazar leans against the doorframe. “Congratulations; the Dark Lord believes you to be deceased.”

“Hurray for me, then.” Robert flops back down on the bed, but not to sleep. “I could eat a cow. A live cow.”

“Is that a request?”

Robert groans. “No. Please do not bring me a cow. I couldn’t handle the reality of a cow in this room right now.”

Salazar brings him beef bone broth, instead, which is drunk with nearly the same single-mindedness in which Robert had consumed water after drinking the contents of a cursed potion. After that, and more water, Robert remains sitting up, but admits he feels like he’s been ill for weeks, not a mere two days.

“It’s that potion, Saul.” Robert’s voice cracks; Salazar hands him a Restorative Potion that will soothe his throat and body. He sounds much improved after the potion is gone. “What I remember of it was just—it was a bloody nightmare, all of it. Every bad thing I’d ever done, every terrible thing I’ve ever conceived of…except worse. So much worse than what Aunt Cassiopeia told me the potion could do.”

“Amplified, perhaps?” Salazar asks. “Enhanced?”

Robert thinks about it. “Perhaps. I understand why Kreacher couldn’t describe the original Horcrux, though. By the time I was scraping a cup along the bottom of that fountain to drink the rest of that fucking potion, I was hallucinating. I remember a hint of gold, jewelry on a gold chain, and I honestly couldn’t tell you if that is a memory of the Horcrux itself, or a memory of the recreated Locket taking its place.”

“It’s not your fault. When it’s time, we’ll retrieve it,” Salazar says, though he keeps his worries to himself. If aging Kreacher dies before it’s safe for Robert to reveal his continued existence, that will make the Horcrux difficult to search for. The only comfort in that scenario is that Voldemort won’t know where it is, either.

“It’s a very good thing I’d run the instructions through my head so many times, setting the patterns I was supposed to follow,” Robert says. “I know I gave Kreacher the Horcrux, and I’m assuming I must have ordered him gone, or you would have mentioned otherwise by now.”

“He was gone, yes. The false Locket was properly in the fountain.”

“Good. I don’t recall that part, but I’m glad I managed it. I decided just that evening to add a note, but that’s because I’m a spiteful bastard,” Robert admits. “If the Dark Lord ever digs that locket out of the fountain, he’ll be reading about me stealing his Horcrux and dying to make certain he dies, too.”

Salazar raises an eyebrow. “I thought you’d prefer him to feel blessed by the spirit of Salazar Slytherin.”

“Eh. I’d rather see you put your boot up his arse, to be honest.” Robert manages a brief smile. “If it weren’t for the need for properly Marked spies in that bastard’s Court, I’d wash my hands of the entire mess and be done with it.”

“The Drink of Despair is harsh, even when it hasn’t been altered. I still want to know how it was changed to act the way it did.”

“You can experiment and figure out the differences on your own,” Robert suggests.

Salazar is quick to refute the idea. “The only victim I’d be willing to test it on is myself, and there is much in my life I have cause to regret. The inability to die does not preclude the _want_ to die, and one can do terrible things to themselves when it’s a mindless desire instead of rational thought.”

“Good point. What now?” Robert asks.

“We resume spying, though in your case, you’re to recover from that damned potion first. We wait and we watch. We safeguard those who are targeted by You-Know-Who as best we can without risking our positions. Both families endangered by the prophecy have remained in hiding since the birth of their respective children at the end of July. As long as they are safe, there is nothing else to be done but that—no. No, there is one thing,” Salazar says as the idea occurs to him.

“What?”

Salazar meets Robert’s curious gaze. “I don’t trust Peter Pettigrew. I never have. There are reasons for this that I will explain to you alone, and those secrets must be kept.”

“Of course,” Robert agrees at once. “It doesn’t really surprise me that Pettigrew isn’t trustworthy, anyway. The whole of his remaining family are Death Eaters.”

“Not his mother or his aunt, the Wilkes sisters. Enid and Edith Pettigrew remain ignorant of Clarence and Leigh Pettigrew’s allegiance,” Salazar informs him. “What is of vital importance is this: your brother isn’t the Secret Keeper for the Potters, not since the prophecy became known to them. They switched. The task was given to Peter Pettigrew.”

“They did— _what?_ ” Robert looks outraged. “I can’t believe my brother would be that Goddamned stupid—”

“They trust Peter Pettigrew,” Salazar interrupts, sighing. “They’ve known each other since the age of eleven. It’s—when a friend you’ve known for so long betrays you, the clues might be there, but that doesn’t mean you see them.”

Robert studies him for a moment. “Someone did that to you.”

“Yes. A very good friend. I was not much younger than you are now when it occurred, and still there are days when it haunts me. Sirius Black thinks that if everyone believes him to be the Secret Keeper for those who are still thought to be only his friends, not spouses, then the enemy will focus on him and ignore Peter Pettigrew.”

“It’s a good thought, even if Sirius is being daft to act as bait in that fashion, but—no.” Robert frowns. “You didn’t say _might betray_. You said _betrays._ You already know that Pettigrew is going to betray the Potters!”

Salazar grimaces, but nods. “I do. What I do not know is when, and thus, the Underground needs to begin keeping watch. I can be honest when I say that I discovered Peter Pettigrew is shit at Mind Magic, that I discovered he was the Potter family’s Secret Keeper instead of Sirius Black. I also speak truly when I say that Peter Pettigrew is terrified, and if his terror overwhelms him, he will find a way to save himself, no matter the cost to others.”

“If Pettigrew appears in the Dark Lord’s Court, then we need to know. We also should be following him everywhere he goes. But if he betrays the Potters, he could do so at any time, and then the Dark Lord—”

“Will not act until Hallowe’en 1981,” Salazar says. “And that is a certainty. I know this, because it is part of the machinations and means required to save my brother.”

“I did promise to help you save your brother,” Robert reminds him, a curious glint in his eyes. “How do we begin that task?”

How, indeed?

Salazar grabs a chair and pulls it close, sitting down next to Robert. “That requires a long explanation, the likes of which you will not be inclined to believe.”

Robert smirks. “I’m a Black, and you’re a bloody Founder of Hogwarts. Try me.”

“Nizar is not my brother by biological means. He was magically adopted by my family shortly after his sixteenth birthday.”

“That isn’t all that unbelievable.” Robert’s brow furrows in confusion. “I know it’s fallen out of favor, and I’m not certain if there are any families left who know how to do it properly, but even I know what a magical adoption is. After that, biology doesn’t matter. He is your brother by magic and spirit, even if magic had to create the connection of blood—”

“He was already a distant cousin,” Salazar interrupts, smiling. “Exceptionally distant. Despite that, he was a natural Parselmouth, magically attuned to my family and its interesting quirks. Even the family land recognized him before the adoption took place.”

“That is a blessed pairing, then,” Robert says. “You were both fortunate.”

“We’re aware, but thank you.” Salazar looks away, once again rearranging his Mind Magic to settle the maelstrom of emotion that has been chasing him since thirty-first July.

Robert misinterprets his silence. “You mentioned he was trapped. Is that what must be remedied?”

“No, not that. He is willingly trapped. It’s a magical working that will end on its own on Hallowe’en in 1995, releasing him from the trap’s confines.” Salazar grimaces. “I hate to use that word. It is not a trap that we designed, but safe passage. Still, if it is a box that one cannot escape from, then a trap it remains.”

“Then why does your brother need saving? Will he be in danger when that magic ends? Also, you are _very_ optimistic about how long I’m going to survive this war,” Robert adds wryly.

“Would you rather I be a pessimist?” Salazar counters, and then continues. “When the magic ends, Nizar will not be endangered by those dwelling near to this magical working, though they may be _very_ confused.” With the distance of centuries between then and now, Salazar can finally feel true amusement at the idea. “I trust you know what a Time-Turner is.”

“Certainly, though I’ve never had the pleasure of holding one.”

“Then you also have enough brains in your head to know that the egg came before the chicken,” Salazar says.

Robert gives him a blank look. “What?”

Salazar sighs. “You need to spend more time in the Muggle world. I mean that you must recognize that the Time-Turner did not come first. The spell came first. The spell was then applied to a crafted device.”

Robert nods. “All right, that’s logical. Why are we discussing Time-Turners? If you somehow missed that aspect of their function, they don’t go forwards.”

“That is because there is only one safe way to travel forward in time, and that is to live it.” Salazar scrubs at his beard, and then brushes one hand through his hair. “I’m not explaining this well, as I’ve only explained it a few times before. Suffice to say, my brother is currently in two places at once.”

“Two places? But that’s—” Robert breaks off and stares at him. “Time travel. He needs saving because he is in two places at once when he shouldn’t be.”

“That last part is debatable.” Salazar takes a breath, reminds himself that delays will help nothing, and explains the whole of it.

Robert, of course, reacts with the steady calm of a true Black. “YOUR BROTHER IS _WHO?_ ”

* * * *

Salazar has had a very long time to plan the rescue of James Potter and Lily Black Potter. It took the formation of the Underground, and the successful “deaths” of those Nizar believed to be deceased in his time, for the feasibility of that plan to be proven. Saving James Potter requires only the selection of a particularly loathed Death Eater. Given the multitude of hated Death Eaters in Britain these days, that is no difficulty.

Saving Lily Black Potter requires trust and belief. It requires the sacrifice of a willing heart. Once Salazar turns to another living being and asks this of them, it can’t be taken back. It cannot be sweetened with honeyed words.

He will be asking them for their life.

In January, Jewel Burke makes the decision for him, in her own stark way. “I have no wish to survive this war.”

Salazar turns to look at her, nearly dropping far too many bay leaves into his cauldron. Bay is a rare potions ingredient, but that is because most brewers are still somehow entirely unaware of how to combine it with clove oil and zinc oxide to make a dental paste for tooth repair. If Muggle dentists could figure out something so simple, magicians have no excuse for their continued ignorance. The bay leaf adds an antiseptic, anesthetic property to the paste that makes the repair easier on the recipient. He normally doesn’t make it at all, but Sarah and her bloody temper means he is patching three holes in her teeth—and that is after repairing the other six by magical means.

He puts the leaves aside and taps the cauldron with one finger, freezing the brew mid-stir so the potion doesn’t ruin. He learned the trick from Myrddin so long ago that he can’t remember when last he needed his wand to do so. “Please explain that statement.”

Jewel looks up from the tea Salazar gave her upon her arrival at the Willow House, her face set in serious lines. “Saul. Salazar.” She slowly breathes out before speaking again. “If I survive this war, it means that I did not do everything possible to stop the Dark Lord’s madness. I do not find that acceptable.”

“Would you end your life, then, the moment the Dark Lord’s life is ended?” Salazar asks, taking a seat at the table to face her.

Jewel shakes her head. “No. I do not wish to die for no purpose. Blythe Petersen gave his life in an attempt to defeat the Dark Lord. Blythe might not have succeeded, but his actions, and Robert’s uncovering of the Horcrux in that cave, taught us that the Dark Lord will not be easily defeated even after your stated date of thirty-first October 1995. If the Dark Lord crafted such a trap around a single Horcrux, the other four may be just as difficult to secure.”

“They might be, yes,” Salazar agrees. He can see a locked bookshelf warded so strongly that to approach it without the key is to suffer in near-fatal ways, which he knows must house the diary Horcrux. It’s still galling to know he can’t touch it.

  1. It will be dealt with in 1993. He can content itself with its known destruction.



The other Horcruxes appear in the water still as they have before: black, glinting stone; a very dark room; the shadowy place of mystery objects with its wooden box. Scrying upon the former cave Horcrux now shows him nothing but a dingy stone corner stuffed with so many fabric scraps that it resembles a rat colony’s nest.

“Do you realize that today is the Epiphany?” Jewel suddenly asks him.

“Sixth January. I am not Christian, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been required to keep track of every day that makes up the whole of Christmastide, but yes, I’m aware.”

“I sat in my church this afternoon, and realized I was having an epiphany of my very own,” Jewel says. “I want to be the means to his end, Salazar. I want to destroy the Dark Lord.”

Salazar frowns before he reaches across the table, taking her teacup from her hand and the saucer it is matched to. Jewel drank all but a remaining mouthful already. He drinks that last bit, turning an innocent cup of tea into informal ritual. Then he places the saucer over the teacup and turns both upside-down.

“I didn’t know you read tea leaves,” Jewel comments in a mild voice. “I thought it was only water.”

“This is not a trick I often pull, as tea leaves are far less talkative than many will have you believe. Sometimes, though, they can be quite useful.” Salazar lifts the teacup from the saucer and looks at what has been left behind. “Determination. I expected that.”

He reads the rest, swallows, and covers the tea leaves with the teacup again. “Oh.”

“What?” Jewel frowns at him. “What is it you don’t wish to speak of?”

“I must first ask _you_ a question,” Salazar counters. He looks directly into her eyes, though not for Mind Magic. He wishes for her to see that he tells no falsehood, not in this. “Would you still be willing for your end to be used as a means of ensuring the Dark Lord’s death, even if you knew that your sacrifice would be naught but a single step?”

Jewel does not answer right away. Except for her brief slip in regards to Robert’s fate, she has refused to let emotions rule her since Octavian was tortured to death before her eyes. She prefers to depend upon her intellect and its rational ways.

Salazar thinks on cursing himself as he realizes something that should have been obvious to him months ago. Jewel is not merely fond of Robert. She sees him as one much like her own son, and her fondness for him goes beyond that of a trusted ally. That is the protective care of a mother.

_The first part of the solution to the puzzle you seek to solve has already placed itself before you._

_Oh._ Salazar can’t decide if that realization is a relief, or if it will be yet another pain resting on his heart.

“Would you be able to assure me that it was a _successful_ single step?” Jewel asks.

Salazar rubs at his forehead before nodding. “I can. It would be. I have been dreading asking this of anyone, Jewel, but there is a task approaching that can only be performed by one who is willing to sacrifice themselves for its sake. If you accept this task, there is absolute certainty that you will die…but there is also absolute certainty that a family will live.”

Jewel stares at him for a moment in consternation. “You mean to make a trap of the prophecy. You mean to create such circumstances that the Dark Lord’s attack on the Potter family will weaken him.”

Salazar smiles. “Yes. Robert figured it out without my needing to tell him.”

Jewel raises an eyebrow. “I know what you and the portrait of your brother have said, but I still find it hard to believe that the Dark Lord will choose the Half-blood child.”

“The Dark Lord is himself a Half-blood,” Salazar reminds her, which makes Jewel wrinkle her nose. She is still displeased by the fact that she followed Voldemort for the ideals of Blood Purity when Voldemort himself cannot meet those same standards. “I don’t need to make a trap of the prophecy. The Dark Lord will make it a trap of his own free will.”

“How?” Jewel leans forward with an eager light in her eyes. “He never makes mistakes—”

“Stupidity,” Salazar interrupts. “He will make a foolish blunder based on the assumption that he already knows all there is to know about the making of Horcruxes.”

“Horcruxes? Why would he be making another—” Jewel sits back in shock. “He doesn’t mean to turn a child into a Horcrux. Certainly he would not be that foolish!”

Salazar merely looks at her.

“He _is_ that foolish.” Jewel lets out a strangled laugh. “You wish me to safeguard the child. The Potter child.”

“Yes.”

“Even if I regain enough of my heart to love a Half-blood, the sacrificial magic will not stop the Dark Lord from turning the child into a Horcrux,” Jewel says. “Doing so incorrectly will certainly inconvenience the Dark Lord, and weaken him, but it will still happen.”

Salazar tries not to sound grieved. “But that sort of sacrificial magic is what safeguards my brother against the Horcrux he will carry for nearly fifteen years. The Dark Lord will have no control over him, and that is an absolutely vital part of the Dark Lord’s ultimate defeat.”

Jewel folds her hands on the table and gives Salazar a careful, studious examination. “I know what has already been, but this is the future we speak of now. From my perspective, Professor Nizar Slytherin and Harry James Potter are two very different beings of vastly differing origins. I would need to love the Potter’s Half-blood child as much as I loved my own son for such a sacrifice to succeed.”

“I think there is more to your own heart than you believe there to be,” Salazar says, and Jewel presses her lips together in a display of discomfort. “But I think you wish for reasons that have a degree of logic to them, and that I can do. You would be safeguarding the very being who _will_ defeat the Dark Lord—not merely his temporary defeat on Hallowe’en of this year, but several times more. After Hallowe’en 1995, that defeat will be completed. The Dark Lord will be ended, and Octavian will be avenged, as will so many others who did not deserve to die by that bastard’s fucking wand.”

“That is a valid point, yes,” Jewel admits quietly. “Safeguarding the tool of my son’s revenge already appeals.”

“As to the rest? The last branch of the Potter family is descended from the children of my father’s sister, and carry the blood of Deslizarse in their veins. They carry Godric’s, as well, but many on this isle can make such a claim. Lily Black Potter is a direct descendant of Rowena Ravenclaw’s only sibling, a half-sister by way of her father. Her child, Rowena’s grandniece, then sought out Hogwarts when she came of age, hoping to find her only living kin. The Potter child lacks only Helga’s blood to be family to all four of us, though he has never lacked her love. You know that he is family to me, Jewel Burke, but he is also family to some of those I loved most in this world.”

Jewel’s slow smile is the warmest expression he has seen on her face since her son’s murder. “If you had stated that from the start, I would have agreed at once.”


	31. Conquered, We Conquer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's 1981, and they don't yet know that this year will be the worst of the entire British Wizarding War. They're too busy trying to survive it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flail-beta'd (cheer-read) by @norcumii because she is awesome. <3

“ _So! It’s 1981,_ ” Nizar’s portrait hisses.

“I know.”

“ _Late January, even_ ,” Nizar continues.

“I. Know.”

“ _Uh huh_ ,” Nizar says. “ _And the limit of your plotting is, ‘Stalk Peter Pettigrew._ ’”

“Do you have a _better_ idea?” Salazar asks his brother’s portrait in irritation. “One single idea, one that is even a mere iota better than this?”

Nizar sighs. “ _No. Not really. Pettigrew doesn’t drink, either._ ”

Salazar turns around to regard Nizar in surprise. “No, he doesn’t. But perhaps he can be encouraged to start.”

“ _Huh. Maybe. That would certainly make him forget that he’s meant to be avoiding eye contact,_ ” Nizar says thoughtfully. “ _It can’t be you, though. You would join him in drink, and you’re already a mess._ ”

“I am not a mess.”

Nizar tilts his head.

Salazar growls under his breath. “I can handle the rest of this year, _hermanito_. But after Hallowe’en, I reserve the right to be blissfully sloshed for several days.”

“ _I wager you don’t get that chance until 1983_ ,” Nizar says.

“Fuck. You.”

“ _Sal, if this plan works—if this plan was ever meant to work—then you’ll have the time you need to see it through. If it was not meant to be, we’ll find out on thirty-first October._ ”

“You still don’t think it can be done.”

“ _I didn’t say that._ ” The portrait frowns and starts speaking with his hands, a reminder that they both need to keep practicing their sign language. “Sal, I asked you to look after my family in 1039. If you are successful in convincing the Potters to go around the history that you know has already come to pass because it’s a part of _your_ past, then that is what will be. If they will not, or if Pettigrew’s betrayal arrives so late that it cannot be? Then there is no harm or shame in the attempt, and I will never hold that failure against you _._ ”

Salazar bows his head. “I will. I will, and I do.”

“ _What happened to Henry, Elizabetha, Monty, and Euphemia was not your fault, Sal. It never was, and never will be_.”

Salazar looks up. “I don’t want history to repeat itself. Not that way.”

“ _Then I guess you’d best be off to tell the others that it’s in the Underground’s best interest to convince a rat to take up drinking_.”

That leaves Salazar with yet another difficulty. He has no idea _when_ it would be best to approach the Potter family, or under what circumstances, and part of that relies on obtaining the Secret Keeper’s phrase from Peter Pettigrew. James and Lily Black Potter will be vigilant, on guard against strangers, and quite likely ready to kill first and ask questions of the corpse afterwards. The Killing Curse is not a pleasant experience, and his immunity would not protect others who might accompany him.

“Take me with you, then,” Robert suggests in March, the day after the Spring Equinox. “I’m their best friend’s brother, and I’m supposed to be dead. That lack of dying will at least give them pause, and sometimes hesitation is all you need.”

“I’ll consider it,” Salazar says, but he thinks his first visit to Godric’s Hollow should be done alone. He endangers no one but himself to do so, and if the Killing Curse is aimed true, at least the others will be safe from a nervous parent’s wand.

“ _Not Robert. Take me with you, instead._ ” Nizar’s portrait hisses at him that same evening.

Salazar regards the portrait curiously. “Why?”

Nizar gives him an unimpressed look before turning his hair stark black and his eyes their original, brilliant emerald green. “ _That’s why_.”

Salazar stands up and studies his brother’s image. Nizar’s resemblance to James Potter is obvious, especially with his father only a few years older than himself. It’s his eyes that reveal Lily Evans’ role in the proceedings, and the snubbed end of his nose. “You still look far more like myself, _hermanito_.”

The portrait shrugs. “ _Yes, but one could argue that you were born first, and thus James Potter takes after_ you _. He is family, after all._ ”

“That is true.” Salazar feels an intense moment of frustration. “That still doesn’t tell me _when_ , though!”

“ _What does the water say?_ ”

“It shows me images of Peter Pettigrew, but that is not a time. That is a who,” Salazar replies. “And we already knew it was the rat that we needed.”

Cornelius Yaxley, for failing to save Honora Pucey or his own manor, is removed from the Innermost Circle after what must have been several months of debate. He is replaced at once by Rabastan Lestrange, which makes Salazar wonder if Voldemort was merely looking for an excuse to have Rodolphus Lestrange’s twin brother among those of the Inner Circle. Next to be demoted to one of the lesser Circles is Dorcus Carrow, and it isn’t another man who replaces him, but Amora Runcorn Goyle.

“Yeah, she’s bloody terrifying,” Herbert confirms, taking a sip from his mug. He is one of Salazar’s few guests who enjoys coffee instead of turning up his nose at it. “I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of that one’s wand.”

“Fantastic,” Salazar mutters. 1981 is already a pile of shit, and that was before anything had the chance to go wrong. Lysander and Christina Fawley Bones were murdered last night, leaving their only child, Susan Bones, orphaned on the last day of March. The baby isn’t even a year old yet. If Susan Bones hadn’t been off with one of the Fawley cousins for the evening, she would be just as dead as her parents.

“Should I go back?” Trinity asks Salazar two days later, with the Fawley-Bones funeral to take place tomorrow afternoon. “I know Amelia doesn’t want children, Saul.”

“I don’t believe that should be my question to answer,” Salazar replies. “If you decided to do so, we would all support you, though. If you do not, none will think you selfish for staying.”

“It does feel like I’m being selfish!” Trinity exclaims. “She’s my sister, and Susan is my niece!”

“Are you ready to be a mother again?” Salazar asks quietly.

Trinity freezes, fear and horror overtaking her features before she is able to mentally step back and set it aside. “No,” she whispers. “No, that was the right question to ask. I think I might lose my mind if I tried.”

Salazar waits until Trinity is sitting beside him again. “I am so sorry this happened.” Trinity nods, her eyes leaking fresh tears, but she says nothing; she only grips his hand and waits for it to be morning.

He spends his time contemplating plans, events, and resources, but in truth, he is worried. There was no “celebration” of Imbolc this year. Voldemort is rarely seen by anyone except the Inner Circles. His health, Jewel says, is not in decline, though his handsome features certainly are.

Biding his time. Waiting.

“He’s going to switch things around this year,” Salazar realizes while in Monica’s company. “You-Know-Who didn’t come out on Imbolc because he is waiting for summer.”

“He usually does nothing during the summer months,” Monica says, but she is already frowning. “It has been too quiet, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Salazar glances at her. “He’ll begin with the summer—not the Solstice, but Beltane. He will increase the ferocity of this war until Hallowe’en. That is when he will act against the prophesized child.”

“And you still believe it will be the Potter child.” Monica nods. “All right. I’ll spread the word. Will you warn the Order?”

“I’ll try,” Salazar says, though of late that has been a frustrating endeavor. This is too important to leave to chance, not when years of habit might otherwise leave Albus Dumbledore’s Order complacent. He’ll need to ask Fawkes to become involved, and he’s thus far avoided that for this entire war. Salazar has no idea how circumspect Fawkes might choose to be. The phoenix learned too many bad habits from Myrddin.

Albus Dumbledore would be a fool to disregard a message borne by the school’s own phoenix. Lucretia Prewett, however, is not so foolish. “You’re certain?” is all she asks.

Salazar nods. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. It is the only thing that would explain Imbolc’s lack.”

“Celebrating Beltane, instead. All right. I’ll tell Rufus,” she says, and turns away.

He’s been reading the body language of others, hearing what they do not say, for centuries. “Is there a difficulty between you and Rufus?”

Lucretia glances back over her shoulder, her expression bitter. “I’m not the one with the difficulty, Saul. He hasn’t really been the same since Deacon’s funeral. Some of Rufus’s views are starting to line up a little too well with Barty Crouch’s nonsense for my taste.”

“He chose an excellent time to stick his head up his own arse, then,” Salazar says, and she smiles. “How bad is it really, Lucretia?”

She ponders that for a moment. “Bad enough that you may wish to consider me to be the Underground’s only contact within the M.L.E. from now on.”

“ _Mierda_.” Salazar glances up at the sky. “You’d best keep yourself in one piece, then.” Without Lucretia Prewett, the Underground will lack any friendly faces within the M.L.E. Salazar would have trusted Kingsley Shacklebolt, were Caradoc Dearborn still officially among the living, but with Karl “dead,” young Kingsley Shacklebolt is most assuredly Albus Dumbledore’s man.

“You do the same,” Lucretia advises, and then Disapparates.

Beltane literally begins with an explosion. A Death Eater paid enough attention to Muggle doings to come up with the idea to craft a timed magical explosive device. No one is injured or killed, but it’s the first time Voldemort’s followers have attacked the Ministry since the daylight assault on the street that resulted in four dead Wizengamot members, among many others.

After that, it gets worse, exactly as Salazar predicted. Half of the Underground is down and recovering from injuries before the end of the month. The M.L.E. is all but decimated. The Wizengamot was already suffering last year, which helped to ensure Cornelius’s Fudge successful election for a new, full term as Minister for Magic. None attend sessions of the Wizengamot any longer except for Pure-bloods, as there have been several attempts (and several successes) of assassinating Half-bloods who try to sit in their family’s seat. The Wizengamot would be ramming through Voldemort’s agenda with lightning speed if the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot did not keep refusing to hear their proposals, as there is a war on and their efforts are meant to be devoted to other things. If Salazar finds only one thing to like about Albus Dumbledore from the European Wars until his little brother’s fifteenth birthday, it will definitely be that.

In June, Bailey’s python Patronus slithers its misty way into Salazar’s sitting room. “ _I found a drunken rat in The Leaky Cauldron._ ”

Salazar is on his feet, trainers on, jacket snatched up, wand in his hand almost before the Patronus has finished speaking. “Which room?” he sends back.

“ _Third private room upstairs. The furniture is in the usual spots_ ,” Bailey replies.

Bailey is just lowering her wand when Salazar Apparates into place, but immediately points it at him again. “What is the Willow House?”

“Sanctuary,” Salazar replies, glad Bailey is being so cautious. “Your gender of late is she, though you haven’t taken a single potion to make the physical changes yet. You’re waiting until after the war.”

Bailey lowers her wand. “And the Order doesn’t know. Not yet. I want to tell Alice first. It was nice to shave off the mustache, though. I couldn’t stand having that kind of blasted hair any longer.”

“I happen to like my facial hair, thank you.” Salazar looks at Peter Pettigrew, who is snoring like an ungodly creature from the depths. The room reeks of fear, desperation, and cheap beer. “What did you find out?”

“Oh, not much…except Peter there has been a Marked Death Eater since November of last year,” Bailey says.

Salazar stares at her. “I’d ask if you were joking, but I know better. Since bloody November?”

“Yeah.” Bailey slides her wand back into her sleeve and shakes her head. “I had to get the little rat so fucking pissed for him to slip, Saul. He’s paranoid. I could feel in his head that he trusts Benjy Fenwick, but he still wouldn’t look me in the eyes until he was all but unconscious already. Oh, and that was a shit way of discovering that he could’ve been spying on Order meetings for You-Know-Who this entire bloody time just by turning rat Animagus. I want to step on him.”

Salazar chooses the chair furthest away from Peter Pettigrew and sits down, keeping his distance from the table. “He can’t have given the Potters away to You-Know-Who. The Loyalty Charm would have shattered.”

“Nope. They’re waiting for Hallowe’en.” Bailey nods at Salazar when he stares at her again. “Yeah, You-Know-Who has it planned already. This shitheel of a rat is supposed to meet You-Know-Who in Godric’s Hollow on Hallowe’en night. When You-Know-Who reaches the cottage, the rat will give up the Secret Keeper’s phrase, and then the Fidelius Charm falls.” Bailey picks up an abandoned bottle of beer and drinks the remainder. “Can we kill him? I’m not kidding about wanting to step on this fucking traitor.”

“Unfortunately not,” Salazar replies. If the Loyalty Charm wasn’t broken until Voldemort was on the Potters’ doorstep, that would explain why they had no warning, no time to defend themselves. No time to run. That part of his little brother’s story is true, then. “Did you convince Peter to meet you here for another round on a different day?”

“I don’t think I’ll need to,” Bailey says. “The rat here used to be in the habit of indulging with Cornelius Yaxley until Yaxley was demoted to the Second Circle. I encouraged Peter to resume that habit. Then I made sure he’d be inclined to trust Yaxley enough to get soddenly pissed again in his company. Yaxley will be happy to encourage him, what with Travers on another sober kick.”

“That he will, and Augustine Travers has the most _annoying_ timing for his brief bouts of sobriety.” Salazar studies the sleeping rat, stymied and furious about it. “You didn’t get the Secret Keeper’s phrase from him, did you?”

Bailey shakes her head. “No. I was too busy working on setting up the other mental hints. I’m damned good at Legilimency, Saul, but Peter has that particular secret buried deep down. I think You-Know-Who helped him do it, too. Peter here is not that good at Occlumency.”

“No, he isn’t. We’ll have to wait until the next time he’s sodden, then. Damn!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be too frustrated.” Bailey gives Peter a disgusted glare. She might still have considered the rat to be her ally in the Order until this very evening proved otherwise. “I’ve been in this bastard’s head. Peter is terrified of You-Know-Who, but he’s absolutely certain we’re going to lose this war, Saul. He wants to be on the surviving side, because all Peter really gives a damn about is himself. His problem is that he’s known the Potters, especially James, for a very long time. The closer we get to Hallowe’en, the more this rat is going to try to pickle himself.”

“Guilt,” Salazar says.

“Guilt, and fucking cowardice,” Bailey spits. “He still has _his_ parents. My parents are dead, my family name is almost dead, and here Peter is, just strutting around those bastards in the fucking Innermost Circle like all of our losses mean _nothing!_ ”

“Wait. The Innermost Circle. Should Albus Dumbledore not know of this already?” Salazar asks in surprise.

Bailey squeezes her hands into fists. “I’d love to say otherwise, but no. He doesn’t. Nobody outside You-Know-Who and the Innermost Circle, not unless Albus decided to keep it a secret—and I don’t see him doing that. Not for this. The fact is, You-Know-Who has kept Peter away from Severus, and vice versa. I’m going to tell Albus myself—”

“Bailey!” Salazar holds up his hand. “I’m sorry. You can’t. You cannot. You must not.”

Bailey glares at him. “Give me one good reason.”

“You would cause the Potter family’s deaths.”

She holds up one finger in protest before lowering her hand. “But if we do nothing, the Potters are going to die! So will their baby!”

Salazar raises an eyebrow. “And who said we would do nothing?”

Bailey blinks a few times. “You mean—oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean…oh, boy. How are you going to convince the Potters to go along with that?”

“James already knows who I am. That isn’t going to be the worst difficulty, but that is all I can say. You can speak of this to no one, Bailey. Not the Order. Not the rat. Not the Underground. No one. I am not in jest when I say that such a thing would cost them their lives. When the time is right, I will tell you more, I promise, but that time is not now.”

“I’ve been Underground for several years now. I get it, Saul.” Bailey nudges Peter with her boot. The rat’s response is to let out another horrific, snotty snore. “Are you going after Yaxley, or would you like one of us with the Legilimency skills to handle it go fishing about in Peter’s head again?”

“I’ll do it,” Salazar replies. “If you didn’t find it this time, that is no guarantee it will be easier on the second attempt. I need that bloody phrase for the Loyalty Charm. This is not the sort of conversation one has by sending an owl.”

Salazar seethes with furious impatience throughout the rest of June, and then more so as July arrives. The rat still hasn’t sat down for a bender with Cornelius Yaxley, and Salazar has tried his absolute best to fucking well encourage it. Peter Pettigrew reeks of sour sweat and fear much of the time now, but the guilt of his betrayal must not have become overwhelming yet. It makes Salazar want to wring the Secret Keeper’s phrase out of the rat by wringing his disgusting neck.

“This just means we have more time to plan,” Robert points out. “You, however, might want to calm down. Just a bit.”

Salazar looks at the remains of his potions still, which was the unfortunate item he happened to be looking at when he swore aloud and let out a burst of magic with it. There is shattered glass everywhere. “I want to put it back together and break it again.”

“Give it about six hours. There will probably be another battle, and you can have Yaxley miss with his hexes and take out a few more Death Eaters,” Robert suggests, and Salazar nods. That would probably be for the best.

He can’t repair this still for brewing again, regardless. One does not trust a potion to glass that has broken unless the glass has been melted and recreated entirely.

Minerva McGonagall’s youngest brother, Malcolm McGonagall, died in battle last month. Her other brother, Robert, has stepped back from active participation in the Order, forbidding his just-graduated daughter from joining them. Salazar doesn’t think Robert, Agnes MacDougal, and their daughter Marjorie McGonagall are much longer for the British Isles, and he blames them not at all.

Then Gwen literally runs into Esmerelda Rothschild in London. Gwen tried to panic, but before she could, Esmerelda Rothschild was hugging her and sobbing out how glad she was that her best friend wasn’t dead. Baffled, Gwen did the only thing she could think of, and kissed a Rothschild so they would stop babbling about the not-dead part.

Now the Underground has a new member, Esmerelda was delighted to discover that the uncle and aunt who helped to raise her are _not_ Death Eaters, and Gwen is engaged to be married. Somehow.

“HOW?” Gwen wails. “I knew her in school, and Es only showed up at the earlier Death Eater parties to see _me_ , and then she stopped and I thought we weren’t friends anymore, but she ditched the parties because I was married off to that idiot, and just—how? How did this _happen?_ ”

“A year’s engagement is still much longer than what your father has ever managed to accomplish,” Jewel says dryly.

Gwen lets out another confused whine and flops back in her chair. “She’s too good for me,” Gwen mutters. “Esmerelda is a Rothschild. I’m just a Greengrass, and a dead one at that.”

Jewel snorts to cover up the fact that she nearly laughed at Gwen. “I absolutely dare you to go to a _Rothschild_ and tell her that she has exceptionally poor taste to have chosen you. Please wait until I can witness the results.”

Gwen makes a face. “I’m whinging about being engaged and bewildered, Jewel. I’m not suicidal.”

A battle on nineteenth July, yet another in a rapid succession of skirmishes and assaults, reveals how tired everyone is truly becoming. First they lose Marinus Burke, first cousin to Arthur Weasley and Benjy Fenwick, and family to the Longbottoms. Then Septimus Weasley and Elphinstone Urquhart are struck by a series of curses and one noxious-looking cloud, and Salazar has no idea if either of them are still alive after they fall; he’s too busy trying to keep an overzealous Auror from blasting him in the face. He shouldn’t have chosen a prominent Death Eater for this battle, but no one knew it would be like this. His Divination had only warned him there would be a fight, not that it would be a bloodbath.

The battle lasts through the night and into the next morning. Salazar isn’t certain what either side is fighting on this particular patch of British soil for, but neither is willing to give it up. Then he hears Bailey shriek.

Salazar turns around in a circle, but he can’t find her. Fuck pretending to be a Death Eater; he rips off mask and cloak and runs in the direction he last heard her voice, sliding in damp grass and slick mud. “BENJY!”

He runs into Abel, who grabs Salazar’s elbow before he ends up falling into the muck. “This way, I think!”

“So do I!” Salazar glances at him as they run. “You’re not in disguise, you idiot!”

Abel shrugs. “Ran out of Polyjuice. I’ll go the invisible route if we run into anyone who might be a bit unimpressed with my not being dead. My sister’d probably try to make certain me being dead stuck this time!”

They keep going until they’re suddenly in clear air. The sounds and sights of the fight are lost to the smoke, dust, and ash that are lingering in the air from a night of magical battle. “There,” Salazar points, and they race to her still form.

Bailey must have been caught by a spell with a great deal of force behind it, but she shielded well. The shield and the collision of the spell—she was thrown so many meters that at first, Salazar thinks she has to be dead. Instead, he and Abel find her blinking up at the sky in dazed bemusement. “Bailey?”

“Yeah?” Bailey swallows. “Am I dead? Because it feels like I should be dead.”

“You’re not dead, but hold still so I can find out how bad this is,” Abel snaps, his wand out and casting charms. Salazar mimics his action on Benjy’s opposite side, a different charm to find nerve damage while Abel seeks out the more obvious ailments.

Salazar needs to only glance at Abel’s diagnostic to know that it’s bad. “We have to get you out of here.”

“No!” Bailey struggles to sit up and succeeds only in flailing her arms. “They’ll think I’m dead!”

“If it wasn’t for us looking for you, and then getting your arse out of here, you would be! Saul, help me, please,” Abel says, but Salazar learned too much of healing and medicine to mistake that for a request. They lift Bailey up from the ground, cushioning her with charms to protect her body, and then Disapparate together.

In the Willow House, Salazar dumps a potion down a still-bewildered Bailey’s throat, leaving her to wander for the next few hours in the blissful darkness of Dreamless Sleep. Abel swears under his breath as he finds the full extent of what she’s lost, using magic to restore her earlobe and a significant portion of Bailey’s left kneecap.

Salazar restarts Bailey’s heart when the stress of her injuries, the shock, and the potion combine and try to convince her body to give up. “None of that!”

“Thank you.” Abel digs around in his own robes. “I think I still have a chance of convincing those missing toes and that pinky finger to grow back, but this potion is fucking unpredictable. Cross your bloody fingers that it does the job proper.”

Salazar holds up his hand, revealing his crossed and literal bloody fingers. “Is this good enough?”

Abel chuckles. “Works fine for me.”

“Are you staying?” Salazar asks afterward, while Abel drinks a celebratory glass of whiskey. For once, the potion for limb regrowth worked as it should, but smaller digits like fingers or toes are often not as difficult to replace. It’s larger limbs that the potion never seems able to properly restore. “I can watch over her if you need to return to Ireland.”

“I’ll stay until she wakes up,” Abel replies. “Shit, Saul. That was bad.”

“It was. I saw Marinus Burke fall early on. I don’t know about Septimus Weasley or Elphinstone Urquhart yet.”

Abel shakes his head. “I hope they made it. That was a mess, but there were a couple of Aurors with a healer from St. Mungo’s closer than I was. Saul—Arnice Weasley died, too. He was protecting his wife, Ginevra. She was injured, and I couldn’t stop to find out how bad off she was, not when I was still dressed as the enemy.”

“Gods.” Salazar scrubs at his face, finding grit and the sharp pain of a slice along his temple that he doesn’t remember receiving. “In just a few decades, I’ve seen Arthur lose almost the whole of his family. It makes me glad that none of his sons are old enough to fight in this stupid fucking war.”

“I’m glad Molly is staying out of it. Mostly. It’s hard to march off to a battle if you’re looking after six little ones,” Abel says. “Bill is almost ten years old now. Can you believe it?”

“That one looks like his father, but he is also very much himself.” Salazar smiles. “Charlie took after the Prewett side. Percy looks to be a blend of the two. The twins are definitely Prewett terrors; it’s obvious even from a distance. All I know of Ron is that he has his father’s eyes—oh, and Molly is pregnant again. Due next month, I believe, and the baby is a girl.”

Abel whistles. “She’ll be the first Weasley girl born in three generations, then. Maybe Molly and Arthur went and outbred whoever bloody well cursed the Weasleys.”

Bailey wakes up after two hours of Underground gossip mixed with updates on those in the Order, and a fair bit more for the island’s magical government. Abel is disgusted with the British Ministry, which is an opinion shared by the Republic of Magical Ireland’s administration, as well.

“Th’fuck happened?” Bailey slurs.

“You decided to take up flying, except you forgot your broom,” Abel says. “We haven’t heard news yet, but given that you left pieces of yourself behind on the battlefield, the Order is going to believe that you’re dead. Welcome to the club.”

“Fuck me.” Bailey grants them a disgusted look. “I didn’t want to go that route!”

“You don’t have to stay dead, though it might be a bit difficult to explain your rescue and recovery without rousing everyone’s suspicions,” Salazar tells her. “This year is different than any other. The rumors of the Order’s traitor are growing every bloody day.”

“I know. S’why I’m saying fuck,” Bailey replies. “What’m I missing, Abel?”

“I gave you back the three toes on your left foot and the right pinky finger you lost. I’m guessing you were caught by a Blasting Hex?” When Bailey nods, Abel continues. “Part of your earlobe and a chunk of your left kneecap were gone, too. You’ve got everything put back where it belongs, but that knee is probably going to hate you when it rains—which will be most of the time, given the weather in Britain.”

“Fabulous,” Bailey mumbles. “Why do I feel like shit?”

“Your heart stopped from the shock of it all,” Salazar says. “It means you can’t sit right back up and go out to cause more trouble. You need to give your body the chance to realize it still lives.”

“At least a week,” Abel emphasizes. “I won’t make you stay in a bed once you feel like you can get out of it on your own, but no fighting, no spells, no spying. Not a bit of it!”

“And you’ll need a place to stay that isn’t here. I have to be in the Dark Lord’s Court. Abel?”

Abel shakes his head. “If I took anyone home with me, the villagers would be certain I’m in a relationship and just won’t admit to it. I’ll never hear the end of it, Saul. The gossip might be remote, but that’s still a risk.”

“Robert,” Bailey says, and then winces. “He’s got that little cottage out in the countryside. No neighbors. S’long as he doesn’t mind putting up with someone in the midst of figuring out how to be a very tall girl.”

“Robert wouldn’t mind in the slightest.” Salazar sends off his Patronus, hoping that Robert isn’t still lingering in a Dark Lord’s Court or on a battlefield.

Robert’s male African lion returns a few minutes later. “ _Yeah, I’ll stop by and nab her for a kidnapping in a bit,_ ” his Patronus informs them. “ _I’m Invisible and keeping an eye out, but I thought you’d want to know: Priscilla Weasley is dead, Saul. Arthur Weasley is a bloody wreck. Sirius is too, for that matter. Priscilla and her father were our cousins. Her mother Ginevra is in St. Mungo’s, and no one knows if she’ll make it, especially once she finds out about her husband and daughter. I just—Priscilla was in Sirius’s graduating class, Saul. Nobody’s taking it well._ ”

“Fuck,” Abel whispers, but Robert’s Patronus isn’t done speaking.

“ _Elphinstone Urquhart is a right mess, poisoned by whatever the Death Eaters were throwing about, but they think he’ll live. Septimus Weasley’s survival is still in doubt. The Order is grieving Benjy Fenwick, too, which is…well, they thought morale was low before this. Now it’s going to be somewhere down in the sewer. There are so many injuries that St. Mungo’s is said to be in a panic. The Aurors are performing field triage for allies and Death Eaters alike. I can’t tell you the Death Eater losses yet, but Monica may be able to do so later. There are at least five bodies in masks, though. I hope they were arseholes and not the kids._ ”

Robert comes to the Willow House as himself. “What?” he asks, spreading his arms. “I’m not going to spend a week in my own house downing Polyjuice all the time, and glamours are itchy! Bailey juggled the Underground and the Order well enough before this that I’m not worried about it.”

Abel gets his first glimpse of Robert with no disguise in the way. “Well, that’ll be…different.”

“Like you’re not supposed to be dead, too,” Robert says, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, but we were scoring goals for opposing teams. Not that it matters,” Abel hurries to add. “Really, it doesn’t.”

Robert shrugs. “We’ve both got siblings who will want to kill us when they find out we’re not dead. Go team!”

Salazar shakes his head, smiling. “Robert, please take Bailey home with you. Abel, get out of my house.”

“I’m off, then!” Abel bows and then Disapparates.

Bailey stares at Robert for a solid minute as she realizes who he is. “Well. That’s different,” she says, echoing Abel. “Cottage?”

“Cottage,” Robert agrees, scooping Bailey up into an easy carry that leaves Bailey rather wide-eyed. “You’re going back in, Saul?”

Salazar nods. “I need to convince a rat to get sloshed.”

“Good luck, then,” Robert says, and Disapparates with his new houseguest.

To Salazar’s immense frustration, Cornelius Yaxley doesn’t wheedle Peter Pettigrew into indulging in more than a simple nightcap until the twenty-eighth of July. While the real Cornelius Yaxley is sleeping off his earlier bout of rampant alcoholism in the upstairs bedroom of his much smaller new manor, Salazar drinks Firewhiskey with a cowardly rat.

“It’s just good sense, is all,” Peter Pettigrew slurs out. “I mean, m’father and m’uncle already get it. S’why they lived, y’know? I thought maybe they were wrong, b’cause Dumbledore’s there, and the Dark Lord is still—” Peter Pettigrew cuts that statement off abruptly. Voldemort has rather violent reactions whenever anyone attempts to discuss his fear of Albus Dumbledore. “And after last week’s battle. That mess, was…it was a mess.”

“It really was,” Salazar agrees. “For both sides.”

Peter Pettigrew blows off that statement. “Wasn’t even close,” he declares, soaring with the confidence of someone who is truly sodden. “Five or so of us compared to the rest? Was a victory, that was. Even James would’ve…” The rat trails off.

“James would have what?” Salazar asks. The curiosity in his tone causes Peter Pettigrew to slip and look him in the eyes.

 _It is about bloody time_ , Salazar thinks, diving in through Peter Pettigrew’s shit Occlumency barriers to begin sifting through the mess of a mind riddled with guilt, fear, panic, shame, bizarre pride, and an incomprehensible sense of resentment that looks to have been building for years.

“James would’ve…he knows tactics n’things,” Peter Pettigrew says. “He would’ve said that was a victory for our side. Wouldn’t like it, but he’d say it.”

Salazar bumps into a memory of the other Marauders sharing their Animagus forms with baby Harry, who giggled with an infant’s delight at the stag and the big black dog. Peter wouldn’t do it, though. He claimed to Lily that a rat might frighten the baby. Lily gave him a look of polite disbelief, but let Peter off the hook.

Peter was already contemplating joining Voldemort after Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom were born. The rat doesn’t want to smell the baby. Rats have _instincts_ , and those instincts might tell Peter that he’s wrong.

He isn’t wrong. He _can’t_ be wrong, because it’s too late. There is already a Mark on his arm.

The Secret Keeper’s phrase is ridiculous, and yet it’s perfect. It’s also a disgusting combination. Salazar has never understood why a woman’s body sometimes insists on the most bizarre foods to consume while pregnant.

Voldemort definitely helped Peter Pettigrew to hide the Secret Keeper’s phrase, but not the fact that he was the Secret Keeper. It’s as if the Dark Lord was daring Albus Dumbledore to look further.

“It was certainly a victory for our side,” Salazar responds to Peter Pettigrew’s last statement. “I’m just not fond of the losses, is all.” Alice Bainbridge, a bright young woman who hadn’t yet realized the folly of this war, was one of those killed in that battle. Mirabelle Crabbe Hopkins was another, leaving yet another child with only a Death Eater father for company. “You’ll have to marry soon, you know! It would be best to have a bit of a selection still at hand.”

Peter Pettigrew looks nauseated by the idea. Salazar uses the granted opportunity to plant the suggestion that Remus Lupin and Sirius Black should be able to see Harry on his birthday. Without the suggestion, he was ready to refuse Sirius Black the opportunity to visit his son. Peter Pettigrew doesn’t want his friends to get attached. _He_ does not want to get attached to _the infant_ , because the Dark Lord is going to kill him, so there isn’t really a point, is there?

Salazar flings himself out of Peter Pettigrew’s thoughts in disgust. Bailey was right. Salazar has no idea what else might have happened in Peter Pettigrew’s life that took a young and cheerful little boy and molded him into who he is now, but the man sitting before Salazar cares for no one but himself.

No. He cannot end it there. This rat is going to be of use to the Underground, whether he likes it or not.

Salazar slips back in long enough to plant the suggestion that Peter Pettigrew needs to repeat this sort of night with Cornelius Yaxley. As often as possible. After all, is it not nice to forget the guilt, if only for a little while?

After Peter Pettigrew drinks himself into unconsciousness, Salazar steals a fistful of the rat’s hair.

* * * *

Severus’s exclusion from the rest of the Death Eaters grows so much worse at the year progresses. He meets with the Innermost Circle only, or the Dark Lord alone, and no one else. He is annoyed at not having Narcissa Malfoy to compare notes and opinions worth, but otherwise doesn’t miss the social gatherings. With Regulus dead, killed by the Dark Lord’s own fucking Inferi, Severus really isn’t in the mood to pretend at civility.

All Severus knows for certain is that this isn’t a belief in Severus’s betrayal. If anything, the Dark Lord is terrifyingly certain of Severus’s loyalty. This is something else, and for the life of him, he can’t find out what the hell is going on. It doesn’t make him feel like a useful spy, even though the meetings of the Innermost Circle are often quite informative.

“He’s going to change his pattern,” Severus tells Dumbledore after Imbolc passes without incident. Voldemort _never_ ignores Imbolc. He hasn’t since the first strike of war in September 1971.

“If there is one thing Tom relies on, it is patterns.” Dumbledore sounds like the smug bastard that Severus would still much prefer to strangle. “I imagine something occurred on Imbolc that kept him from acting. You’ve told me yourself that he is keeping secrets from you.”

“And it’s that very thing that makes me believe he’ll change the way he is fighting this war,” Severus retorts, but gives it up as a bad job. He knows Albus Dumbledore won’t listen to him. Why would he? Severus is just a Slytherin, a pitied fool who made _poor choices_.

Severus is still seething by first March, sulking in a corner after the conclusion of the only Order meeting he’s been capable of attending this month. There might have been another one, but he wasn’t going to be dragging himself over the Order’s doorstep while his nerves were still screaming about the Cruciatus Curse.

Arthur Weasley approaches him, looking as pleasant and bland as ever, before he holds out a glass filled with something that smells alcoholic. “Severus.”

Severus accepts the glass warily, wondering if he’s being trapped or poisoned. The glass’s contents smell interesting, some sort of brandy that he thinks is probably out of Arthur’s usual budget range. It’s certainly out of his. “What is this?”

“A toast,” Arthur says in a mild voice. “My sixth son was born on this day last year. At the time, I thought I would lose him and Molly both. They’re still alive, though, and Ron is thriving.”

“Congratulations.” Severus stares down at the liquid in his glass. The last toast he had was with Madam Burke on the day Draco Malfoy was born, but not until Narcissa proved that she would live, as well. “I am…glad for your family’s well-being.” He is aware that Molly is pregnant again, but little else; he tries to keep it that way. If he doesn’t know personal details about the Order, he can tell the Dark Lord the truth when asked about them.

“They’ll be fine. All of them. I can’t—” Arthur pauses, swallowing brandy as a cover for an emotional upswelling he doesn’t want to voice. “I won’t allow anything to happen to them, and I’ll celebrate every moment they give me.”

Severus gives in. Arguing with a Weasley is rumored to be a fruitless endeavor, anyway. “To your son.”

“To my son,” Arthur echoes, tapping his glass against Severus’s. They both drink, though Severus realizes at once that yes, he truly does prefer Firewhiskey. Or perhaps it’s the burn he prefers, just punishment for his sins.

“Why are you speaking to me?” Severus hadn’t intended to ask, but this is out-of-character behavior. That makes him nervous, and suspicious.

Arthur collects Severus’s empty glass, glances around, and then the side of his mouth curls up in a bitter smile. “You’re not the Order’s only spy. As one spy to another? Keep your head down, because we need you.”

“But where—ah.” The Ministry. Arthur works there, and is rumored to be in line for a promotion, but no one takes his department seriously. Thus, they do not take Arthur Weasley seriously. “You should do the same, then. _He_ intends to push the Ministry this year. Hard.”

“I’m a Pure-blood,” Arthur says with another grim smile. “I can weather that storm.”

Severus raises an eyebrow. “I thought you were considered a Blood Traitor.”

Arthur snorts. “That is Pollux Black’s opinion, one that Lucius Malfoy likes to parrot, but they’re not in the majority. My mother is ready to remind them both of exactly who she is and what she’s capable of, and Lucius in particular will deserve every moment of it.”

Severus had forgotten—Arthur and his lost brothers are the children of a Black woman, one who found a worthy spouse in Septimus Weasley. “Lucius Malfoy has many opinions, most of them useless.”

“But not all of them.”

“No,” Severus agrees, realizing that Arthur is merely reflecting all of the bitterness Severus has felt of late. “Unfortunately not.”

By May, Severus’s warning to Dumbledore has proven itself true. He glares at the doddering old bastard after two weeks of nightmarish fighting. “I bloody well told you so.”

“You did, yes.” Dumbledore looks over at the phoenix on his perch, his tail burning while his head is shoved beneath his wing. Fawkes seems irritable, as well. “Someone else also tried to warn me. I didn’t listen to either of you. Consider this an old man’s failing, Severus, not any folly of yours.”

 _I already know it was your failing,_ Severus thinks sourly.

In June, the Dark Lord begins boasting of a way to not only find the Potters, but walk right through the Fidelius Charm that protects their home. Severus’s blood runs cold at the thought, but if Sirius Black is one thing, he is utterly loyal to James Potter. It won’t be a Secret Keeper’s failure that endangers Lily and her child, but he knows of no other way to break a Fidelius Charm. That particular magic is not about wards. A Fidelius Charm is about loyalty, and that cannot be broken by the intent of an enemy. He informs Dumbledore of Voldemort’s belief. The old bastard looks grave, saying he has no idea how it could be possible, but he will make certain the Order is aware of the danger. In fact, he’ll see to it that both households are watched over.

Lily’s child, Harry Potter, turns one year old on thirty-first July 1981. Severus wonders what the child looks like. He hopes the boy takes after his mother. Another green-eyed ginger running about, teaching himself to fly in a playpark, is a far more pleasant image to dwell on than another spoilt Potter being handed the path to greatness on a golden platter.

Severus refuses to indulge in the old habit of chewing on his lower lip. Tomorrow begins the thirty-one days of August. Thirty days in September. Thirty-one in October. The Dark Lord will probably try to attack Lily and her family in ninety-two days, on Hallowe’en.

Murdering others on Samhain is one of the Dark Lord’s favorite traditions.


	32. Expectation of Living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.”_ –Voltaire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-flailing by @norcumii who is, as usual, quite awesome. 
> 
> Also hey look: POV swap!

Lily gazes at her wristwatch, watching the tiny arm tick down the seconds until the second-hand sweeps past midnight. “Happy birthday, baby boy,” she whispers, leaning over the cot railing. Below her, Harry is stretched out, blanket already tossed aside, his black hair a complete disaster instead of a mild disaster. His skin has a rosy golden glow from summer days spent running around the back garden, and today was no exception. James and Lily kept their son awake and on his feet for as long as possible, desperately hoping that Harry will _sleep_ through the night before his birthday.

Five minutes is usually the tell. If he sleeps past that point, Harry is down for the count for the next few hours. If he wakes up before that, Lily has learned through a lot of trial, effort, cajoling, bribery, and tears that Harry won’t be going back to sleep for a while. It’s pointless to leave the nursery until she knows which it will be.

Harry breathes out a long sigh as the five-minute mark passes, snuffling a bit as he settles. Lily lets out her own sigh of relief and puts the blanket back over him. Harry will probably kick it off again in a few minutes, but for now, it makes Lily feel better. She dares to brush her fingers through his messy curls, taking a moment to marvel at her child, and to think about how very much she loves her son.

Lily hasn’t yet told James how much she wants another baby, how she wants Harry to grow up with a sibling close in age. She loved having that closeness with Tuney until Petunia decided to hate. Then that closeness was poison, but that wouldn’t happen here. She’s certain of it.

Of course, it’s Sirius’s turn…and Sirius isn’t here.

Lily knows what so many people would say. It’s war. People are dying. Her baby might be the target of a megalomaniac Dark Lord. They could all die if You-Know-Who figures out how to get past the Fidelius Charm.

She’d tell them that giving up, living in fear, would be the victory that You-Know-Who wants. She lives in fear, all the time, that the evil bastard is going to take Harry away from her, away from _them_.

She won’t let him. Never.

Lily walks away from the cot when she hears James call her name from downstairs. When she goes out onto the stairwell landing, James gives her a look that has all of her instincts screaming in alarm. “Peter’s here.”

“What—now?” Lily rests her hand on her sleeve, feeling the reassurance of her wand in place. “It’s after midnight, James! Peter’s too early.”

“He probably has a good reason,” James says, but Lily notes he’s already holding his wand. He shoves his glasses up his nose with his left hand. “Stay up there, just in case, yeah?”

“Okay,” Lily agrees. If something is wrong, if it’s the worst thing about to happen, the Invisibility Cloak is in the nursery. At best, it will hide a mother and her child. At worst, it will hide the baby.

James unlocks the tiny viewing portal they had to install within the cottage door’s upper glass pane. The Shielding Charm is built in. It won’t stop the Killing Curse, but James would notice a wand in his face.

Nobody knows why the doors can repel the Killing Curse. The cottage has been in the family for so long that everyone has forgotten what made it possible, but Monty demonstrated that trait himself before Lily, Sirius, and James moved in. Just in case.

“Peter!” James sounds surprised and pleased. “You’re off schedule, you know.”

“Oh, I know. Sliced avocado and mustard, by the way,” Peter’s voice says, and Lily feels her shoulders relax.

Not all the way. Not completely. Lily doesn’t think she’s had a real go at relaxation since February 1980.

“It’s good to see you.” James opens the door and gestures for Peter to come inside. “Still off-schedule, Pete.”

“That password is revolting,” Peter replies. He’s wearing his usual full wizarding garb, though Lily thinks he’s developed better taste in the last year. He still prefers his clothing to be baggy, though. It makes his trousers, vest, button-down shirt, coat, and robes look shabby, even though they’re high quality and probably new.

“You say that every time. Hello, Peter,” Lily greets him, smiling.

“Hello.” Peter seems twitchier than usual. “At least I’ve got that part right, then.”

James has been reading Peter’s body language since they were eleven years old. “What’s wrong? Who died?”

Peter glances at James in surprise. “What? No one! Not since the nineteenth—no, sorry, the twenty-first.”

Lily gasps and all but slides her way down the carpeted stairs. “What do you mean, no one since then?”

Peter looks at Lily and James and frowns. “You don’t know. Of course not. Bollocks.” He peers around James. “Could we go into the kitchen? I could do with a bite. It’s been a very long night for me.”

“Sure.” James trades glances with Lily. It sounds like Peter, and he had the phrase for the Fidelius Charm, but something isn’t right. She nods at him, and James looks reassured. Not that things a necessarily fine; he just knows she’ll have his back.

In the kitchen, Peter goes straight to the kitchen table, hands sorting through his robe pockets. “Peter?” Lily asks.

“This won’t take long.” Peter puts his wand on the kitchen table. That’s followed by two corked tubes of Polyjuice, plus four empty and corked tubes with residue on the bottom of each one, a full flask of what Lily thinks she remembers as being one of the strongest curse or poison cures in existence, and another corked tube of Pepper-Up.

“Christ, Peter,” James says in shock. “Since when do you carry all this about with you?”

“Still not done,” Peter responds. He puts a second wand down on the table, and Lily has her wand pointed at him in a blink. Peter doesn’t have a reason to be carrying around another wand, especially one she’s never seen before. It’s carved with runes that look to have been fire-blackened, but otherwise, she thinks it’s cherrywood, or maybe varnished to look that way.

“Where did you get that?” James asks in a strange tone. Lily looks at him, but he’s watching Peter with a great deal of wariness.

“Do you two not have any patience at all?” Peter adds an odd, cloth-bound case to the growing pile on the table, one that thumps down as if it’s far heavier than it should be. On top of the case, he places a knife from his robe pocket and another from his boot, both sheathed. Finally, he pulls a long, green, and very unhappy grass snake out of his robe and gives it a puzzled look. “And where did you come from?”

Peter glances around, spies an empty fruit bowl on the table that held grapes until Harry and James demolished them, and taps it with one fingertip. The sound rings out in a clear note that is rife with magic before the snake goes onto the plate. “Warming Charm. That’ll keep the little one from wandering off.”

Then Peter turns to them and holds his arms out at his sides. “You’ll want to make certain you know I hold nothing on my person capable of causing you harm.”

“Polyjuice,” Lily whispers. Anger starts to bubble up. “You’re not Peter.”

“But I’m not an enemy, either, or the Fidelius Charm would have shattered. It takes a betrayal to do that. I’d rather you both be certain.” Not-Peter wriggles his fingers. “Before dawn would be excellent.”

“Needles,” James snaps. “Take the robes off, huh?”

If they’re being attacked, it’s by an oddball. James’s instruction makes Not-Peter smile. “Good man.”

Not-Peter shrugs out of his blue robes and tosses them over the back of the nearest chair. His shirt and vest are both deep Slytherin green, which isn’t a color Peter tends to wear. He tends to avoid black, also, though Not-Peter’s trousers are a stark black that matches the _modern_ fashionable Wizarding black boots he wears—which means the boots are a century out of date by Muggle standards. Without being asked, Not-Peter removes his vest and pocket watch, then unbuttons his shirt to be rid of that, too. He’s wearing a black t-shirt underneath with a printing for Queen that Lily’s never seen before.

James gives the shirt a baffled look. “Well, if the rest hadn’t convinced me that you’re not Peter, that would certainly do it. Peter hates that band.”

Not-Peter tilts his head. “Should we not get on with the searching?”

Lily holds her wand on their guest while James searches him the way Alastor Moody taught them all. She isn’t ready to declare him an enemy, not when he’s gone to such interesting lengths to disarm himself, but she hasn’t survived years of war by being foolish.

James finally steps back. “Nothing magical or otherwise,” he admits. “Who are you?”

“Can it wait until the Polyjuice wears off? That should be in about…” The man glances at the Muggle watch on his wrist, a surprising choice for a wizard. Lily thinks it must be old; Dad had a watch like it that her grandfather gave him. “Less than three minutes now. I’ve always had excellent timing.”

“Excellent timing,” James repeats. He picks up the rune-carved wand and stares at it. “I know this wand.”

“You bloody well should. That wand has saved your arse,” Not-Peter says, turning around to open the fridge. He peers at its contents with both eyebrows raised. “Is someone attempting to bury you in food? Because I think they’re succeeding.”

“Blames the Hogwarts house-elves,” James says tersely. “Where is Peter?”

“Peter Pettigrew is doing as he often does of late, a habit that grows more frequent as the months pass. He is currently getting absolutely pissed in another’s company. If he hasn’t drank himself into unconsciousness yet, I would be very surprised.”

Their guest turns around with a Preserved bowl of chicken salad and nudges the refrigerator door closed with his elbow. “I’ll eat it with my hands if I must, but a fork or spoon would be viewed as a kindness.”

James takes care of it so Lily doesn’t need to lower her guard. The tableware drawer on the other side of the kitchen opens; their guest catches the spoon that comes spinning towards his face. “Food is more important than telling us your name?” James asks in irritation.

“I never said I wouldn’t. I was not lying about how long my night has been.” The man takes a bite and chews, pulling an odd face before swallowing. “Bloody hell, I still do not understand the fascination this century has with coating food in creamed eggs flavored with vinegar, but it’s delicious.”

“I’ll pass on your compliment to the house-elves,” Lily says dryly. It’s an alternative to dwelling on his wording— _this_ century. That means he’s as old as Albus Dumbledore, if not older. It makes Lily wonder if Albus sent Nicholas Flamel to visit them, but that doesn’t fit—the way he speaks of Peter is too disdainful, too scornful.

 _Oh, Peter, I hope this man is just a lying imposter, because if he isn’t? You’ve gotten yourself into trouble, and it’s nothing good at all_.

“As for my fixation upon a meal? When one is spying among You-Know-Who’s lot, it’s best not to eat anything lest you risk being poisoned,” Not-Peter says.

James frowns. “It sounds like you’ve been spying for a while, then.”

“Yes.” Not-Peter chews up another mouthful of chicken salad. “A long night turned into a full day, and then part of the evening again, else I would have been here sooner than this. I’ve been awake and shy of food for thirty-two hours now. The only thing keeping me upright is Pepper-Up and adrenaline. I’m a bit nervous.”

“You definitely have to be hungry to willingly be eating that.” James watches the chicken salad disappear in horrified fascination. Lily loved it while she was pregnant, for God knows what reason, but she’s hated it ever since Harry was born. The house-elves still bring her a bowl once a week, even though Lily has begged them not to. It’s really not her thing anymore. Even Harry turned up his nose at it, and sometimes Lily thinks her son might actually eat _anything_.

Dammit, now she’s feeling unwanted sympathy. Lily doesn’t want to feel anything for this man until he’s proven to be friend or foe. “If you’ve really been spying on You-Know-Who, then you’re either very brave, or exceptionally daft.”

Not-Peter grins as the Polyjuice begins to wear off. “I’ve been accused of both in equal measure.”

The usual horrific contortions of Polyjuice potion’s end, and alter the man’s skin color from Peter’s ruddy red to a darker bronze. His eyes turn from blue to a green-dominant hazel; his hair darkens and gets shorter, becoming a curly, very dark and silver-threaded brown.

Peter’s beardless face becomes thin and angular, handsome despite the lines of age appearing on the man’s skin, particularly around his eyes. He gains a dark beard with only the slightest hint of silver, neatly trimmed and cropped close instead of mirroring the current Muggle fashion of thick facial hair. He grows taller, and clothes that were baggy on him, just like Peter prefers, now fit perfectly. He’s still a bit shorter than James, maybe five foot seven to her husband’s five feet nine inches in height, but that’s still three or four inches taller than Peter.

This man is muscled and slender, bordering on too thin. If Lily had to guess at his age, she would say he could be anywhere from a hard-lived thirty to a well-preserved sixty, but wizards are odd. He could be eighty and Lily wouldn’t be able to tell.

James lets out a sudden, pained breath. “Oh, fuck. Saul!”

“Who?” Lily asks. She has no idea who this man is supposed to be. He looks so familiar though, like a much older version of James. That could place his ancestry as Indian, like Elizabetha, but the accent Saul began using after he stopped pretending to be Peter is an odd mishmash of Everywhere.

Saul smiles at her. “Your husband wrote that you phrased it a very specific way in February 1979. I, Lily Black Potter, am The Great Potter Family Secret Nonsense, otherwise known as Saul Luiz.”

“Er, pleased to me—how the _hell_ do you know my full married name?” Lily asks, jabbing at Saul again with her wand. “We kept that out of the newspaper for a reason. The ceremony was private for a reason!”

“Lily, please don’t…” James tries, but Saul shakes his head.

“I attended your wedding ceremony as an invited guest. I thought it was lovely, by the way. You wore Elizabetha’s wedding dress very well,” Saul explains, a brief hint of sadness in his eyes.

Lily lowers her wand. “I didn’t see you there. I would have remembered a face like yours.”

“That is because you saw an old friend of Henry Potter, a man Henry insisted be invited out of respect. Samuel Black took himself off about an hour into the reception to rest his old bones,” Saul replies. “Samuel Black was truly a friend to both Henry and myself, but he had no interest in leaving France to attend the wedding of people he’d never met. I also did indeed need the rest. Spying is exhausting work, and I’ve been at it for two decades now. I thought I’d be done with it after World War II, but You-Know-Which-Idiot is such an exhausting bastard.”

James looks bewildered again, and far too sad. “You didn’t—you didn’t come to their funerals.”

Saul shakes his head again. “James. I’ve been to every Potter family funeral since the end of the European wars.” He then embraces James when James lunges forward, clinging with grim determination. Saul looks pained before he grips the back of James’s shirt. “James. I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s…it’s fine.” James steps back, wiping at his eyes before resettling his glasses. “You were there. That helps. It really does—wait! If you were there, then I just realized Granddad wasn’t talking to their gravestones after Uncle Charles and Aunt Dorea’s funeral. He was talking to you!”

“He was, yes.”

Lily has had enough of being confused. “Why were you The Great Potter Family Secret Nonsense, then?”

Saul looks at James, then at her. “Because we were never meant to meet, not until this year, and even then we’re still on the wrong bloody timetable My meeting James in 1975 was…unplanned. Saving his life on Imbolc in 1979 was just as random.”

“What!” Lily glares at James. “You didn’t mention anything about needing to be saved that night!”

“Shit, I forgot to mention that,” James admits at once, wide-eyed. “I don’t know how I would have told you without also telling you about Saul, though. Granddad laid down the law about that in 1975. He said it was too dangerous, and repeated it in 1979, saying there was no way in hell I should endanger you and Sirius that way.”

Lily studies Saul. Beneath the body language of confidence, poise and self-assurance that doesn’t scream of arrogance, she sees a man who is frustrated and exhausted, and very, very worried…about them? Euphemia and Mum both claimed that Lily has good instincts, and Lily doesn’t think she’s wrong. Maybe it’s not _just_ Lily and James, but Saul is definitely worried about them. “You’re not a spy for the Order.”

“No.” Saul seems to approve of her guess. “I lead the Underground.”

James narrows his eyes. “The Underground is supposed to be a rumor.”

“And I’ve been wandering around as a very well-preserved Inferi for the last ten years,” Saul replies dryly. “Your father was part of the Underground as well as the Order. He’d have been amused to be told he belonged to a group of spies who did not exist.”

“Dad—he always said he wasn’t the spying type,” James stutters.

Saul snorts his opinion of that. “Monty also said he wasn’t the political type, yet I saw him be exactly that on several glorious occasions. He took after your grandfather far more than he ever really believed. Besides, the Order has a spy of its own. Is it so unbelievable that others could achieve the same?”

“You’ve met Severus,” Lily blurts out, and then clamps her mouth shut.

“I’ve met and conversed with him, but he remains unaware of that fact.” Saul locks eyes with Lily. “Yes, he truly is a spy, on _your_ side.”

Lily understands what that emphasis is for. She didn’t get what Severus tried to teach her about Slytherin concepts before, but she’s had time to think about them now. _Your_ side means _her_ side, her family’s side, not the Order—though if Severus gave his word to assist them, he won’t go back on it. Severus hated Albus, especially after what she now knows of the infamous Werewolf Incident, but the Order isn’t just Albus Dumbledore.

Sirius admitted (to Lily, in private) that he’s willing to apologize to Severus for his shit behavior in school, but he’s worried that making the attempt would see him flayed alive and his bollocks left somewhere in the Thames. At the time, Lily had laughed and agreed. It seemed so amusing at the time, all of it, a huge relief.

Then she gave birth to Harry, and it’s like a switch flipped in her head. None of it is funny anymore. Now it just makes her angry.

James is still frowning. “But if the Underground is real, why does Albus keep saying that there are no other anti-You-Know-Who groups in Britain aside from the M.L.E.’s struggling efforts?”

“Why, indeed?” Saul asks. “That is a very good question, but one I can’t yet answer. I will; I may even have opportunity to do so tonight. But not yet.”

“Then I’ll ask a different question,” Lily says. “Why weren’t we supposed to meet you until this year?”

Saul finishes scraping the bowl clean of chicken salad before he answers her. At least the house-elves will be happy that one of their offerings is finally being eaten again. “Imagine my face without the beard, without the silver in my hair, and then drop your spouse’s eyeglasses atop my nose.”

Lily can see it easily enough. It isn’t just a vague resemblance; Saul and James really do look a lot alike. Their nose isn’t the same, with James definitely picking up that aquiline feature from his grandfather, but otherwise, it’s far too obvious that they’re family. “Oh.”

Saul nods again. “Young James would have had questions that I couldn’t yet answer, though Henry, Monty, Elizabetha, and Euphemia were aware of the answers to those questions by autumn 1971.”

Lily finally lowers her wand, but doesn’t put it away. “Why would all of you decide on something like that?” she asks. James looks gutted, possibly by the perceived lack of trust, but Lily doesn’t think trust had anything to do with it. She’s had one hell of an education lately in how far a parent will go to protect their child. “I can understand not doing it then, not when James was still a kid. Why was it supposed to wait until now?”

That odd sadness, chased by a hint of regret, shadows Saul’s features. “I’ve spent a very long time trying to figure out how I would handle this particular moment when the time came. I have three things to offer you, and the first is honesty. I am here because someone very dear to me once asked that I try to look after his family.”

Saul looks to James. “You collected the family Pensieve from the house that morning, before the Death Fidelius hid the manor from you. You should fetch it. If you have a cassette player, bring that, as well.”

“I think the Pensieve is in the basement, somewhere in the corner of your brewing room,” James mutters. “Lily, do we still have a cassette player thing? Vinyl is so much better.”

“I prefer vinyl, as well, but it’s difficult to record things on it without a vinyl press of your own,” Saul replies.

“Yes, I have a cassette player.” Lily feels odd, elated, and terrified. It’s like the calm before a battle, when things are quiet, but that calm is just a cover for the vibrating energy of expectation in the air. “I used it once to try and convince Harry that music would help him sleep. It didn’t work.”

For some reason, that makes Saul smile, an expression that emphasizes the brighter green in his hazel eyes. “Somehow, I am not surprised. Please retrieve it, then, and the Pensieve. I’m not going to pull a runner and vanish on either of you, though you may in fact wish to be rid of me in short order.”

Lily bites her lip. “You’re going to tell us something we won’t like hearing. Aren’t you?”

Saul inclines his head, a graceful gesture that leaves her with the impression of a courtly, respectful bow. “I will be telling you of many things you won’t be fond of, and for that, I am sorry.”

* * * *

Lily checks on Harry while quietly collecting the cassette player, a bulky armload without a radio. It’s one of the only players she could find that would adapt to working with magic instead of just giving up in a pathetic puff of smoking despair. Harry is still deeply asleep, letting out little baby mumbles and hissy snores. Lily is now doubly glad she and James worked so hard to exhaust him today. Mum and Dad are probably not going to sleep much tonight.

Downstairs, she discovers that James has already lugged the heavy bluestone Pensieve up the basement stairs. It’s in the middle of the kitchen table, next to Saul’s discarded pile of potions, that odd box, the wands, and one random garden snake.

Saul eyes the cassette player in approval before he looks at James. “I need to open this box. If you still feel a need to be on your guard, now would be the time.”

“No, it’s…it’s fine. Well, I’m fine with it,” James corrects himself, glancing at Lily.

Lily puts down the cassette player. “Is the box going to explode?”

Saul grins, revealing neat, even teeth that appear as a flash of white compared to his dark beard and skin. It’s a wonderful smile of open delight, and Lily doubts that expression has been on his face often, not lately. It makes her want to like him, even though she’s still frightened of what he might tell them. “No. Its contents may provide explosive reactions, but no literal explosions.”

Lily hopes she isn’t making the wrong choice. “Go ahead, then.”

The box is thin on the outside, but once unlatched and opened, a great deal of Wizarding space is revealed. It has stacked layers, simple wooden trays that Saul removes one at a time. One tray holds folds of familiar-looking gossamer fabric. Another holds a single roll of canvas, old enough to maybe be a portrait, or maybe just some sort of magical supply for a man with unknown talents. A third tray is host to a vast array of Polyjuice, unused and waiting. The tray below it is devoted to bundles of hair tied down in place, each labeled with a name. There are a _lot_ of those.

The next tray of Saul’s box holds Aging Potions and Youthfulness Potions, tonics that change hair color, potions that darken or lighten skin color, potions that can make you appear sickly. Several other potions will temporarily change the color of your eyes. Those are insanely difficult to brew, finicky blasted things that can fail even if you’re doing everything right. Lily prefers all of those options to Polyjuice, which has always struck her as being really, really gross. It’s definitely a Muggle thing; she’s never met a witch or wizard who balked at the idea of drinking Polyjuice unless the resulting potion was visibly unpleasant.

Another layer reveals yet more potions: pain-killing draughts, Restoratives, Skele-Gro that doesn’t look to be the right color, potions that will re-grow skin or even missing limbs as long as they’re applied quickly enough, Dreamless Sleep, standard Sleeping Draughts, an anti-paralysis potion, anti-swelling potions, Wide-Eye, Oculus Potion, the Draught of Living Death, several glass-sealed bezoars, Pepper-Up, Dittany, antidotes for Veritaserum and common poisons, Blood-Replenishing potions, Murtlap Essence, burn creams and bruise pastes in flat glass jars, Calming Draughts, two phials of Wiggenweld, Love Potion cures, Invigoration Draughts, and potions for soothing and restoring nerve damage. It’s a wizard’s first aid kit in potion form.

 _Crucio_ , Lily thinks, and shivers.

The next tray of potions is the complete opposite. Veritaserum, poisons Lily can identify and many others she can’t, Black Fire (the potion to make it, not the potion to walk through it), and weaponized brews that react when they’re broken open on the ground: Noxious Smoke, temporary blindness potions, Birth of Fire for a flaming wall of protection that will frighten off a Death Eater faster than Black Fire, and yet more she doesn’t recognize.

“Fuck,” James says in awe. An Auror’s standard kit is pathetic in comparison.

“You certainly believe in being prepared,” Lily comments, and Saul smiles his appreciation. “Potions Master?”

“For a very long time now, among other things.” Then Saul pulls out a tray that has a box of its own resting on it. Lily sucks in a breath at the sight of the Potter family crest, the triangle resting within a circle broken in half by a single line. The additional _P_ that is normally found atop that line is absent.

Without the letter _P_ , it’s the symbol of the Deathly Hallows from a collection of Wizarding nursery tales. James always laughs off the comparison, but Lily often looks at James’s Invisibility Cloak and _wonders_. All stories have origins, and the nonsense about Death might be just that, but Ignotus Peverell is buried in Godric Hollow’s ancient cemetery. James admits that his part of the family is descended from that long-dead man, but insists the cloak is just an heirloom that Monty Potter gave to him in fifth-year for extra protection when the war got worse. Not that he spent their fifth year _using_ it that way.

Saul gives James the box. “This is for you. It will open only to one who is blood of the family. I could have done so myself, but…” He hesitates; the shine of grief is stronger than ever. “When Henry gave that to me in mid-October 1979, I decided that if I was going to hear them at all, it would be the first time you listened to them, as well. It didn’t seem right to do otherwise.”

James snatches his knife from his belt, de-spelling it of the magic that would keep curious little hands from hurting themselves on the sharp blade, and slices open the tip of his thumb. The lock clicks when James presses his bleeding thumb to the latch, followed by the lid popping open.

Lily stands at James’s shoulder so she can find out what needed to be secured against people who weren’t family. Inside the box are two rows of full-size cassettes in their plastic cases, each one neatly labeled, but it isn’t just Henry’s penmanship on display. It’s everyone—Euphemia, Elizabetha, and Monty. There are even tapes in that box addressed to Lily and Sirius, and that makes Lily want to choke on grief. She barely had the chance to know them, and yet they’d loved her enough to include her in this.

“They knew?” James asks in a cracked, raw whisper. “They knew You-Know-Who would…at Hallowe’en?”

“No. We suspected,” Saul corrects gently. “That Hallowe’en, there were five possibilities, including your family. Henry, Elizabetha, Monty, and Euphemia treated that possibility as if it might be a certainty, while refusing to fear that it would become reality.”

James bows his head. “The warding that night. They had time to prepare that ward to keep us out.”

“You were the one who was with James that morning,” Lily realizes, staring at Saul.

“I was.”

Lily swallows. “Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for doing what Sirius and I couldn’t.”

“There is one other, James.” Salazar reaches into the next tray of his well-packed box and pulls out a handheld recorder, the new ones that use tiny microcassettes. “I gave this to Henry the last time I saw him, suggesting that if there was anything further he or the family wished to say to you that occurred before Hallowe’en, he would still have the means to do so. I found it—I found it in his desk that morning, and one side of the tape is half-used. I’ve never listened to it.”

James takes it in his hand, staring down at the tiny little dictation recorder. Tears are starting to slip down his face as he realizes what the family left for him. “Why didn’t you? Why not listen to it?”

“Because your grandfather was my friend. Henry…” Saul breaks off, briefly pressing the back of his hand against his mouth. “Henry Potter was the first friend I’d had in a very long time. Then it was Elizabetha, Monty, Charles, Dorea, Charlotte, and Will. Even Helena Black Potter, in her own standoffish way. Samuel. Euphemia, too, when Monty brought her home from university. Your twice-great aunt, Isobella, was such a bloody firecracker. The most off-color toasts at your parents’ wedding came from her. Then you, you bloody troublemaking Marauder. I toasted your birth with my friend as he told me your name. I miss all of them, so very much, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop grieving their loss.”

Lily blinks away tears. “And because they were family.”

Saul stares back at her. “Family that I failed, Lily Black Potter.”

“Lily, please,” she insists, understanding that must be some sort of odd courtesy. “And I don’t think you did. We’re still here.”

“And that ward was meant to keep us both out on Hallowe’en night,” James says.

Saul shakes his head. “No, James. That ward was meant to keep you out, to keep you safe. They didn’t know how to alter it so as to not include me.”

“Why just _me?_ ” James asks, perplexed. “That doesn’t make any fucking sense!”

“Bear in mind that I am sort of feeling this out as we go.” Saul seems to be thinking for a moment. “I didn’t see the ancient tapestry of the four Houses of Hogewáþ in the manor in November 1979. Is it here?”

“It’s in Harry’s room,” James answers, starting to look a bit shell-shocked. “Why?”

“If you bring it here, I will show you,” Saul replies.

“I’ll get it. I’m the one who can slip in and out of there without waking the baby,” Lily says.

She uses the brief trip up and down the stairs to try to calm down. The ancient tapestry with its emblems that predate what Lily knew in school hang on the wall opposite Harry’s cot. She realizes as she gently removes the tapestry from the wall that it’s the first time she’s ever touched it. The cloth is soft beneath her fingers, the wooden frame beneath worn silky smooth with age.

James is fiddling with the dictation recorder in his hand when Lily gets back to the kitchen. “Here.”

Saul looks at it for a moment before nodding. “It needs to be placed upside down on the table.” He gestures with his hand and sweeps some of his pocket detritus towards the content garden snake still curled up in the fruit bowl.

Lily makes sure the table is clean and dry before she does as Saul asked, thinking, _A snake is having a nap on my kitchen table, and it isn’t even pinging the radar for how fucked up everything is right now._

On the back frame of the tapestry, runes are carved directly into the wood. Lily thinks they’re runes, at least, but she’s never seen anything like them before.

James reaches out to touch one and then doesn’t, his fingers hovering just above the ancient wood. “I don’t know these runes. Glyphs? Letters? I’m not sure what they are.”

“The term _rune_ strictly applies to letters of Germanic descent, and this language is not of that family. This particular language is considered to be of Celtic or Brittonic descent, but I was told long ago that the Gaels were a later influence, not what came first. This script most often reminds me of Mycenean that someone dropped in a blender. It would be more correct to call them hieroglyphs, or ideograms.”

“I have no idea what the fuck half of that meant,” James says.

Saul rolls his eyes. “ _Zure eskolaratzea gaitzets dituzte I_ ,”[1] he mutters. “It’s Pictish—true Pictish, not their later partial adoption of Ogham when the Norse-Gaels proved that they were staying instead of leaving.”

“You can read Pictish?” Lily asks in surprise. She saw a few symbols like those on a rock sticking out of the dirt on school grounds, but had no idea what they meant. Neither did anyone else. Professor McGonagall didn’t even know what the stone was for.

“No. Not myself. However…” Saul nods at James. “He is of the blood, as am I, as were Monty and Henry. Touch it. Nothing ill will befall you to do so, I promise.”

James’s eyes dart to Saul. “It’s a blood-based translation spell?”

“I am so glad you were sensible enough to listen to your grandmother.” Saul makes a “Go on” gesture with his hand.

Under James’s hand, the carvings change. Runes of Pictish—Lily will probably never call them hieroglyphs, because she immediately thinks of ancient Egypt—become letters from the Latinized alphabet. Then the letters shift again, translating themselves into modern English.

 _To my cousin Eneko of House Heredia, once apprenticed to House Grypusdor, and to_ _Eadgyth_ _Grypusdor, once apprenticed to my own father for House Deslizarse. I gift this reminder of our home and unified Houses on this first day of Maius Anno Domini 1026. May it ever bless your family_.

“1026,” James repeats, wide-eyed. “This is from the Founder’s era. The family always said it was that old, but this is…did they know?”

Saul’s eyes are lingering on the letters. “Yes.”

“Grypusdor. Gryffindor. That one’s obvious,” Lily says. “But Deslizarse is—I think it’s Spanish?”

“Mum would always roll her eyes over that bit in _Hogwarts: A History_ that claimed Salazar Slytherin was Irish, because Salazar is a Spanish name.” James suddenly looks up at Saul. “So is Saul Luiz.”

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed,” Saul responds in a dry tone.

Lily nearly starts laughing, but the tapestry’s words help to keep it at bay. “The Potters aren’t just descended from Godric Gryffindor. That’s a translation of Slytherin, isn’t it?”

Saul pinches the bridge of his nose, letting out faint huffs of air that Lily finally translates as frustrated chuckling. “Reverse that, if you please.”

James raises both eyebrows. “Slytherin is a translation of Deslizarse?”

“And a bad one, at that, but this isle and her mix of languages…” Saul shakes his head. “Saul Luiz is not my real name, either, though it is a legal identity that has served me well for most of this century.”

James jerks his hand away from the tapestry, like he was going to draw his wand and decided not to at the last second. Lily has her hand on her wand handle, so she can’t really blame him for the paranoia. “What?”

“Your family knew,” Saul says, which helps Lily to calm down. “Henry guessed my identity on Hallowe’en night in 1945, though he said not a word of it to anyone but Elizabetha. _Everyone_ who lived in their household but for yourself discovered such on first September 1971, when I was forced to step in front of the Killing Curse in order to save Henry’s life.”

Lily can’t decide if she needs to point a wand at Saul, or gape at him in utter disbelief. “You can’t have. It’s fatal.”

“And yet if you can survive it, it hurts a great deal,” Saul replies. “Truly, it does. I try to avoid it whenever possible, but on that day, I much preferred that Henry survive.”

James is gaping as much as Lily is. It doesn’t really make her feel any better. “But—hell with it. _How?_ ”

Saul turns the tapestry over, looking at the embroidered symbols, before facing them again. “I know of four ways to stave off death. One is of the vilest sort of magic, utterly evil. One is by way of the Philosopher’s Stone, which, until Nicholas Flamel bloody well created one, was believed to be impossible. Another may well be sheer, absolute stubbornness. Dexter Fortescue seems intent on proving the theory, given that the bastard is now over three centuries old.”

“What’s the fourth way?” Lily whispers. She already knows it isn’t the first three. The hatred Saul holds for the first method burned in his eyes. Nicholas Flamel shares the Philosopher’s Stone only with his wife. Former Headmaster Fortescue is just…well, _stubborn_ is probably an understatement.

“Desperation.” That odd sadness is back on Saul’s face, but stronger this time. It’s grief and fear tangled up with unyielding, unending love, and Lily finally recognizes it as an expression she’s found often in the mirror since Harry was born. “Desperation driven by love, by the hope that the chosen path was the correct route to take. By having faith that carefully laid plans will survive the passage of time. By calling upon a force far greater than you will ever be, and daring to ask for a favor…though in this case, it was a trade.”

James voice is harsh and soft, as if he wants to be angry and doesn’t know how to get there. “What kind of trade?”

Saul opens his mouth to answer and then pauses, his brow furrowing. “I think, perhaps, you should first listen to what your family last recorded for you. The device you hold in your hand.”

James glances at the dictation recorder again. “I—Lily, help?”

Lily gently takes the recorder from him, glances at the tape, and rewinds it. “Starting at the beginning is usually best, Prongs.”

“There was a very interesting bit in one of the Muggle newspapers in June 1979. Something about a stag running wild through London near to a number of pubs. What made it more interesting is the added note that there seemed to be a man chasing this stag, threatening him with beer.”

Lily watches as James turns the color of a tomato. “Stag nights aren’t meant to be literal, sweetheart.”

“I was _really_ pissed at that point. Something startled me,” James admits, and then he starts laughing. “I’d forgotten about that already, you know? Things have been so tense that I just…” He smiles at Lily, and it’s like the old smile, the one she got to see before You-Know-Who decided their unborn son needed to die. Theirs, or Alice and Frank’s boy. Either one of them could die. You-Know-Who might just decide to get rid of them both, just to be a complete bastard. “Remus made fun of Sirius later for chasing me down on two feet when he could easily have…you know.”

“I doubt a large black Newfoundland would have changed the tone of that newspaper article,” Saul says. The recorder in Lily’s hand clicks at the same time, announcing that it’s done rewinding the tape.

James sighs and shrugs. “I’m not even going to ask how you know that about Sirius. Lily, would you play the tape? I need to—” He swallows. “I need to hear it, even if it’s just to hear a voice.”

“If they truly used up half the tape, it will be fifteen minutes,” Saul tells them. “Each side is a half-hour long. I told…I told Henry that when I gave it to him.”

Lily presses the play button, makes certain the little recorder’s volume is turned all the way up, and then sets it on the table next to the stacked trays and the box of full-size cassette tapes. “Here we go.”

For a full two minutes, there is silence, with the occasional shift of fabric or furniture. “ _I must be daft, because I have no idea if I’m using this thing properly._ ”

“Dad,” James whispers.

“ _The little light is on._ ” Lily clamps her hand over her mouth when she hears Euphemia. The recording is clearer than she’s used to hearing, but if the little recorder was altered to work with magic, why not fix that, too? “ _That means it’s working, dear._ ”

“ _I need to get out more. I have no idea how that light works, either. I suppose I should give this a go._ ”

“ _Monty. If you don’t start soon, you’ll run out of tape,_ ” Euphemia says dryly.

“ _Right. I just…_ ” In the recording, Monty blows out a long sigh. “ _Hello, James. I know this will find its way to you, though you might have to rifle through a few drawers afterwards. Or the rubble. I’ve charmed this thing to hell and back to withstand damage or fire. That will have to be enough_.

“ _If you don’t find the recorder, then Sal will. He’ll know when it’s time for you to receive it. I still pray it won’t be needed, but it’s thirtieth October now. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your grandmother look so grim. She hasn’t said a word, but Mum is certain it’s going to be us. I’m glad the Lovegoods, the McKinnons—_ ” Saul winces, squeezing his eyes shut. “ _—the Shafiqs, and the Goldsteins won’t have to bear this, but I’d hoped…never mind. You know what I would hope for. I’m so glad you’ll have Harry. You’ve no idea how glad we are for that. I wanted to meet my grandson, but…_ ”

Lily reaches out and grabs James’s hand. “Oh, God.”

James is crying. “They knew. They—you warned me that Gran knew Lily would be pregnant by November, but I still didn’t think…”

“ _I know you’re wondering why we’d know his name. Harry James Potter,_ ” Monty says, and James’s grip on Lily’s hand clamps down hard. “ _Dad is flattered, by the way. That will be two generations of Potters bearing his name, but he deserves it. He’s fought in this war in his own way, even if it was through the damned Wizengamot, but your grandfather has_ always _fought._ _World War I. World War II. The European Wizarding War. This blasted British Wizarding War. It’s a Potter trait, you know. We’re all good men with short tempers. I didn’t think I would be fighting in this war the way I have, working with the Order while keeping an eye out for the Underground, and yet here we are_.

“ _Beneath the tapes Dad packed away in that box Sal will give you are two phials of memories for the Pensieve. Dad didn’t want them to be copies; copies can be faked. Your grandfather gave up his memories of that time so that you would see everything, and understand_.

“ _Listen to me. Please. What you will see in that Pensieve will be so Goddamned hard. It was for me, for your mother—all of us. I know you’ll be able to stand it, even though it will hurt. I know Sirius and Lily can bear it, too._ ”

Lily notices Saul flinch again when Sirius is mentioned. That scares her more than the idea of watching a few Pensieve memories.

“ _Have faith, son. You’re all about to walk a very careful, fine, frightening path in order to preserve what’s left of our family. I want it to be otherwise. I want it so much, but that isn’t going to happen. When the time comes, trust Sal. I’ve known him since I was fourteen years old, and nothing has ever once shaken my faith in that trust. I trust him with my life. I trust him with your life. Lily’s life. Sirius’s life. Baby Harry’s life—oh, particularly Harry, but that isn’t my story to tell_.

“ _If…no._ When _the worst happens tomorrow, know that I love you, James. I’m proud of the man you’ve become. I’m beyond grateful to know you will be loved, cherished, and defended even after we’re gone._ ”

Lily wipes her eyes and glances over at Saul. She hadn’t realized he’d moved; he’s leaning against the countertop next to the fridge, one hand out to brace himself on the wall. “Saul?”

“They’re not done,” he says in a wet, ragged voice.

Euphemia speaks into the device next, but there was a delay that was filled with more shifting fabric and furniture sounds. Someone must have forgotten to turn off the recorder. “ _My darling boy. There is very little I can say that has not already been said, both by me on my own tape, and by your father just now. I love you, and Lily, and Sirius. After you hear this recording, if the timing is right, I hope that you will give your son a kiss, and tell him his grandmother loves him_.

“ _I suppose I would also tell you to trust Sal. Besides, he is most likely the reason you exist. Without the Restorative Potions he made for me through the years after we met, I don’t think your father and I would have been able to conceive a child at all._ ”

Lily frowns. Euphemia had never mentioned any health problems. “Why?”

James answers in another gap between recorded words. “Mystery illness. Literally. Nobody knows what it was. It slowly killed my grandmother, Mum’s mother, when they were still young. Mum practically raised my idiot aunt Eleanora.”

“ _Sal,_ ” Euphemia says next. Saul turns his head in the direction of the recorder. His eyes and the end of his long nose are red from weeping, and he looks wretched. “ _Sal, this is not your fault. You carry around too much guilt for things not of your making as it is, and I’d like it very much if you would conveniently rid yourself of that bad habit._ ”

Saul smiles as more tears drip down his face. “But then what would I have left?”

“ _I know what you’ll have just said, and you’re still being ridiculous,_ ” Euphemia says tartly.

The only other thing that Monty says is, “ _Sal. Thank you._ ”

The recorder clicks off, but it’s only the sound captured on tape. There is still quite a bit more left to hear.

Lily isn’t certain she can listen to the rest of this. This is just as bad as watching her parents fade away, their strength ebbing with every passing day until there was nothing left at all.

James squeezes Lily’s hand again. “We can.”

She nods, taking that offered reassurance. “Okay.”

When the device records itself being turned back on, it’s Elizabetha. “ _My sons and my daughter,_ ” she says, and James lets out a choked sob that Lily is pretty sure she echoes. “ _It’s morning on Hallowe’en, and I think this will be the last time I speak to you in this life. I’ve left the words I thought necessary recorded on the tapes Sal will grant you, things about our family you might not know, or long ago heard and forgot. When I die, my family’s blood continues on only in you, and in my grandchildren. Please do not name any of them Fleamont._ ”

James utters a wild giggle. “Sorry. Family joke,” he explains, but Lily notices that Saul is smiling, too.

“ _I’ve done my best to ward this manor, to reinforce its many protective charms, so that it will one day be a home for you, your spouses, and your children. It’s the last gift I can give you, aside from this reminder. My love for you all will not fade, even though the wheel may turn. This manor has stood many years, and weathered many storms, including an idiot who blew up my back garden because of a nuclear detonation_.”

This time it’s Saul who laughs, and then he presses his lips together in obvious distress.

“ _Have faith, daughter. Walk this path with your head held high, for you’ll do nothing that would bring you shame. I will be proud to know that such a strong woman is the mother of my first great-grandchild, for I truly believe Harry will not be the last_.

“ _Sal, wonderful friend who enabled me to redecorate the back garden in a proper manner. If ever I forgot to thank you for bringing Harry back to me after Grindelwald’s defeat, then I do so now. If I neglected to do so after you saved Harry’s life in 1971, granting me eight more years with my husband I otherwise would not have had, then know that I am beyond grateful. I know I never had the chance to thank you for saving my grandson in February, and I do so now. Thank you for blessing my family with your love and protection. May our gods grant you the peace you deserve._ ”

When James realizes the recorder is in the midst of another silent, recorded hand-off, he asks, “You blew up the back garden?”

Saul wipes his face dry and looks sheepish. “Do you ever dream about green light, followed by an explosion?”

James pulls a face. “Sometimes. I used to think it was me being afraid of the Killing Curse until I realized it was the wrong kind of green. Why?”

“That would be me blowing up your back garden due to a nuclear detonation. Thirtieth October, 1961.”

Any questions prompted by that are interrupted by a fourth voice. “ _James._ ”

James’s chin lifts. Something about Harry Simon Potter always prompted James to straighten into what Lily calls the Pure-blood Pose. Sirius does it too, and he absolutely hates when Lily catches him at it.

“ _If I know you, and this is heard in November 1979, you’re still angry about the warding that kept you away from us. I won’t apologize for it. Elizabetha and I know that if we don’t, you won’t survive. I have no doubt that this is going to be bad. I hope you will remember us as we were before, not what you may find after his damned Death Eaters have had their say_.

“ _If it’s 1981, then I think by now you understand why we made a ward to keep you away from the manor that night. My great-grandson will be a year old, give or take a few months. For most of his existence thus far, Harry has lived under threat of death because a madman wishes to murder him. Yes, if you don’t yet know—You-Know-Who has already made his choice, or he soon will_.

“ _He won’t win, James,_ ” Harry says. “ _I promise you. I_ know _that he does not. Little Harry will do exactly as he’s been prophesized to do. It’s you, Lily, and Sirius we fear for, and your cousin Remus, but I have a dear friend who is going to make certain all of you survive a madman’s plan. I know we didn’t let you save us, but let him save you_.

“ _Sal. I know, one way or another, you’re listening to this. I think we both knew that when I gave you those tapes, it would be the last time we saw each other on this earth. You’re a Seer, and I’m not a fool._

“ _I know how much it hurt you to retrieve those memories in 1971. Underneath the tapes are two Pensieve memories I collected from my own head, though I imagine the others may have mentioned that already. You won’t have to repeat that moment. I don’t know if you’ll watch the memories this time, either, but perhaps viewing them from my perspective will help grant you some distance. To watch them, simply empty both phials into the Pensieve. They’re charmed so that they’ll play in order, and yes, they are both from first September 1971. The first is what you thought we needed to know. The second is what I think James, Lily, and Sirius might need to know. Let me do this for the man who is the best friend I’ve ever had aside from my own brother_.

“ _James, the Secret Keeper’s phrase is this, but you’ll need your grandmother’s tongue to use it:_ _I grant you breath from the dragon, and with it, I grant you life._ ”

[1] Euskaran: “I loathe your schooling.”


	33. The Pathless Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,  
>  There is a rapture on the lonely shore,  
> There is society, where none intrudes,  
> By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:  
> I love not Man the less, but Nature more,  
> From these our interviews, in which I steal  
> From all I may be, or have been before,  
> To mingle with the Universe, and feel  
> What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.” _
> 
> -Lord George Gordon Byron 1788-1824

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're guessing that there was a lot of @norcumii's beta-reading flailing, you would guess correctly. <3

This time, when the recording clicks to note that the tape was turned off, there is nothing after. Lily slowly reaches out and presses the Stop button.

“Breath from the dragon. What is that?” James wonders.

“Henry is referencing a plant, long extinct, called Dragon’s Breath of Life. If used correctly, it had the strength to bring the very recently dead back to life. Of course, their body had to be intact enough to survive it. The plant could only bring back the soul of the deceased; it was up to others to ensure that the returned soul stayed that way.” Saul retrieves a handkerchief from the pocket of his denims and presses it against his eyes. “I hope your Punjabi is better than mine. Mine is rubbish.”

“My Punjabi is decent enough for that. I think.” James finds a handkerchief in his trousers and dries his face. Lily finds and uses a paper towel, because she’ll probably never be that civilized. “What’s your real name, Saul?”

Saul flips out his handkerchief until it dries in a fit of magic. “If your grandfather chose the memories I believe he did, that is a question easiest answered by Pensieve.”

“Do you just not want to tell us?” Lily asks.

Saul folds up the handkerchief and pockets it, though he still looks to be a wreck from crying. Lily is glad not to be the only person in the room who is currently a blotchy mess. James weeps like a dainty princess, which is completely unfair. “It isn’t that. My name is going to create questions that demand answers, and those questions will be answered by what you see. Your family might even ask questions within these memories that you’ll have yet to think of, and sometimes that saves time.”

Lily frowns. “Are we on a timer?”

Saul raises an eyebrow. “Your son has a birthday today.”

“Yes, and?” James looks frustrated. “It isn’t as if anyone is coming to see him except Peter, deliverer of gifts and messages. Not that I won’t be glad to see him, but that’s all that’s happening today.”

Saul smiles at them. It’s a very close mirror to a younger Marauder’s smirk of utter mischief.

James’s eyes widen. “You told Peter to bring the others. Didn’t you?”

“I might’ve suggested it.” Saul’s smile vanishes. “Peter Pettigrew knew that Sirius Black was going to ask to see his son on his first birthday, and he was going to refuse. I can be an utter bastard, but even I am not that cruel.”

Lily’s earlier worry for Peter returns tenfold. “You came here as Peter, but you don’t like him.”

“I do not merely dislike him, Lily. I _loathe_ him,” Saul replies. “How do you think I came by the Secret Keeper’s phrase in order to be here tonight?”

“You said he was getting pissed—” James sucks in a breath. “Legilimency. If your Occlumency isn’t ironclad, being that drunk makes it easier for someone else to get into your head.”

“Did none of you think to ask the rat if he was capable of decent Mind Magic?” Saul shakes his head. “Foolish question. Forget that I asked it. What Peter Pettigrew _did_ do, at least until his new excursion into alcoholism, was to get very, very good at avoiding another’s gaze.”

“Oh, God,” Lily whispers, feeling ill. “Has anyone else—”

“Noticed Peter Pettigrew’s failings? No. Everyone is still convinced that your other spouse, Sirius Black, is your Secret Keeper. Everyone, that is, but for one Dark Lord, and eleven members of his Innermost Circle.”

Lily feels faint, like the room is trying to tilt beneath her feet. She might need to shove Saul out of the way and sick up in the kitchen sink, because if that’s true, then it’s her worst nightmare come to life.

“No, he can’t know! We’re not dead!” James shouts. “And if the Innermost Circle knows, Snape would know, and he would tell—”

“Eleven out of twelve, James,” Saul interrupts in a quiet voice. “You-Know-Who has made certain that Severus Snape doesn’t know, else what good is his rat spy?”

Lily’s stomach turns over. Kitchen sink vomiting is becoming more and more of a possibility. “You said you’d spent the last thirty hours spying on Death Eaters,” she whispers.

Saul nods. “I did, yes, though I only impersonated Peter Pettigrew during the evening. I still had two phials remaining because it’s wiser to have more than to run out unexpectedly in dangerous confines.”

“Then—then You-Know-Who’s people think Peter’s turned against the Order, thanks to you!” James bites out.

“Do you believe me to be the sort of man who would do such a thing to an innocent?” Saul asks.

“I don’t _know_ what kind of man you are!” James shouts. “All I know is what my—what my family told me. Oh. That’s why you wanted me to listen to them, first. Because…oh, God.”

Lily reaches out to him and catches James’s hand as his expression shatters. “James.”

“Please. Please tell me he didn’t,” James begs, fresh tears streaming down his face. “Tell me that it was a Death Eater using Polyjuice to pretend to be Peter. He wouldn’t!”

Lily rests her forehead on her husband’s shoulder. “James.” Saul isn’t lying. She doesn’t know why she’s certain, but she is. For reasons she might never be able to explain, it makes too much sense.

“Please,” James repeats. “Saul.”

Saul sounds regretful, but he doesn’t sugarcoat the truth. “Betrayal is always so much worse when it comes from one you think of as family. Peter Pettigrew joined You-Know-Who in November 1980. He had already been thinking on it after the Pettigrew family was attacked on Imbolc earlier in the year. Then his father and his uncle revealed to him that they were Marked Death Eaters, loyal to their Dark Lord. That is why they and their wives were spared, though Edith and Enid Pettigrew remain ignorant of what their husbands have done. Peter Pettigrew held Clarence and Leigh Pettigrew at bay by telling them he’d think on what they’d told him, and by swearing he would mention such truths to no one else.”

“Clarence and Leigh—” James sounds like he’s choking. “I know these people. I know my grandfather didn’t get on with Clarence in the Wizengamot, but…but _Peter_. I’ve known him most of my life, Saul. Please tell me Peter’s doing this for the Order. That he’s a spy like Snape.”

Lily looks up to find Saul shaking his head. “Severus Snape has more integrity in his smallest finger’s fingernail than Peter Pettigrew holds in his entire body. Peter Pettigrew’s decisions were motivated by fear. Fear so very often makes others do terrible things. Worse is when they realize their choice was wrong, but to rectify it, to make amends, is too much of a burden on their conscience, too much of a difficulty. They will instead dig themselves in deeper until fear becomes belief, refusing to admit to any possibility that they were ever wrong in the first place.

“Peter Pettigrew was already afraid, but learning what his father and his uncle had already done—learning that his favorite cousin William Wilkes had been cut from the same cloth? That caused his fears to multiply. Then came The Western Slaughter of 1980, and the massacre in Scotland on the very same night. Peter Pettigrew took the Dark Mark just afterwards, in the first week of November, because he knew that You-Know-Who would spare such a _useful_ spy. The rat bowed his head and brought sacrifices to his Dark Lord’s feet, knowing he was betraying his friends, his mother, his aunt, the Order, and everything he’d ever claimed to stand for.” Saul hesitates. “For what it’s worth: I am sorry. Not for him, but for the pain he has inflicted upon you both.”

“He…” James has to lean against the wall behind him. “Peter really betrayed us.”

“On your wedding day in 1979, Peter Pettigrew was loyal to the Marauders first, and to the Order second, but his loyalties were not firm, unshakeable things, not as they are for you, Remus Lupin, or Sirius Black. The rat now drinks with Death Eaters or in pubs, trying to wash away the guilt of selling out his friends in order to save his own worthless hide.”

“When did you find out?” Lily’s voice sounds distant and far away. “Someone would have noticed something like that by now. They would have to.”

“The Underground knew already that Peter Pettigrew was looking to jump ship, and still it took us until last month to discover when, how, and why,” Saul responds, sighing. “You’re capable of sending a Patronus message. Send one to Benjy Fenwick and ask her.”

“Her?” James repeats in confusion.

“Benjy’s been wanting to switch genders for a while now,” Lily tells him, and her poor husband still looks confused. “You know, you’re the Pure-blood wizard here. I’m the one this had to be explained to, and I’m still handling it better than you.”

James pulls a face. “It’s just weird, not being able to think of Benjy as one of the guys anymore.”

“Save your arse and stop talking, James.” Lily casts her Patronus, waiting for the doe to form. All it takes now is the thought of Harry, and the doe is so corporeal she’s almost solid to the touch. “For Benjy Fenwick, to be delivered only if she’s alone: is Peter Pettigrew the spy and trai—and traitor that Saul Luiz says he is?”

Lily flicks her wand to send the doe off, and then sags in place. James catches her before she lands on the floor. “Oh, God,” she moans. “If you could get the Secret Keeper’s phrase from Peter’s head, then anyone could.”

“You-Know-Who can’t have the phrase, not yet,” James says, “or the Fidelius Charm would break, just as Saul said when he first got here. Betrayal, remember?”

“How is it not already a betrayal?” Suddenly, Lily is the one shouting. “How is it that Peter can prance around in You-Know-Who’s fucking presence and not break this stupid Fidelius Charm because HE BETRAYED MY SON!” The teacups sitting on the sideboard all shatter.

Saul glances at the broken teacups, but otherwise takes Lily’s magical flare of temper in stride. “You-Know-Who helped the rat to bury the phrase, so the rat wouldn’t grant it to him on accident. He’s waiting.”

“Waiting for _what?_ ” Lily yells, and then gasps so hard it makes her lungs hurt. “Hallowe’en. He’s waiting for Hallowe’en. Just like he does every year.”

James helps Lily to sit down before he drops into the chair beside her. “ _Knew_ , you said. The Underground knew already. How? If Peter was avoiding everyone’s gaze so well that you didn’t find out for certain until June—”

“Not yet.” Saul indicates the python Patronus crawling into their kitchen. “Someone has a reply for you.”

Benjy’s python curls up and lifts its head, opening its mouth to speak. “ _Saul, I’m supposed to be dead now. What’s the bloody point of pretending to be dead if you’re just going around telling people that I’m not dead?_ ” Benjy still sounds like a man, so if she’s started taking the potions, it’s early in the process.

“Dead?” James squawks.

“Shush!” Lily orders. “Worry about that afterwards!”

“ _Lily—and James, if you’re there—Saul isn’t lying to you about Peter. I found out about the rat myself. Got him pissed upstairs in The Leaky Cauldron until he was too drunk to forget that he isn’t supposed to be looking dear old trusty Benjy Fenwick in the eyes anymore. It was really damned easy to get into that man’s head, and really, really disgusting. Peter isn’t the only one who’s gone and switched teams during this war, but he’s done the best job of hiding it. I’m sorry Peter decided to be a dickhead. Don’t do anything stupid because of it, all right?_ ” Then Benjy’s Patronus crawls away.

“Putting that aside for the moment, because I think I’m going to be sick…” James takes an unsteady breath. “Why is Benjy supposed to be dead?”

“That would be news the rat hasn’t yet seen fit to bring you,” Saul answers. “I’m hoping you at least know about Caradoc Dearborn and Dorcas Meadows.”

“James was there when the Order lost Caradoc and Dorcas.” Lily cried all night afterwards. James had kept his promise, though; he’d stayed with her in Godric’s Hollow after that terrible night.

“What else? Because other than learning about Ron’s birth, and Molly staying in St. Mungo’s for a bit afterwards, there really hasn’t been much,” James says. “We were under the impression that things were getting better.”

Saul stares at them in disbelief. “Better? The war is worse than ever before. You-Know-Who is outdoing himself this year. Damn that fucking rat!”

He then tells them about all the things Peter hadn’t mentioned. Deacon Frobisher Scrimgeour, Rufus’s brother-in-law, died in battle last year. Moody killed Evan Rosier Senior in revenge for Caradoc’s loss. He’s been trying to do the same to anyone named Malfoy who crosses his path, but so far, no luck. Bellatrix Black married Rodolphus Lestrange, which is such a horrifying concept that Lily never wants to think about it ever again. Narcissa Malfoy now has a son she named Draco, which James notes is a sharp departure from Malfoy tradition.

“Petunia had a baby boy in June, last year, and she didn’t tell me.” Lily doesn’t know how to feel about that. She’d sent a letter telling Petunia about Harry, and Petunia hadn’t responded, but that was so typical of her that Lily hadn’t given it much thought afterwards. “I have a nephew, he’s a year old, and I didn’t know.”

“I’m sorry.” Saul has an odd glint in his eye that suggests he isn’t fond of Petunia, either.

They didn’t know about the full extent of the Western Slaughter in Bristol on Hallowe’en, or the utter decimation of Clan McKinnon just afterwards. Peter only mentioned that Marlene and Mary had been killed, not that the entire family had been executed. Lily cries again at the loss of her two friends, feeling that sharp grief all over again. “Mary MacDonald was the first friend I had in Hogwarts aside from Severus. She introduced me to Marlene in our second year. They were dating by fifth year.”

“I am sorry.” Saul really does look as if he means it. “We grieve those losses, but particularly Mary and Marlene McKinnon. Marlene was part of the Underground as well as the Order, so many of us considered the pair of them to be friends.”

James and Lily knew about Regulus, though. Of course they would know. Walburga sent an owl to Sirius telling him to switch sides or sire an heir, only afterwards telling him that Regulus’s date of death turned up on the family tree for third November 1980. Sirius stayed with them for a full week that month, alternatively raging against Regulus’s stupidity, clutching Harry to his chest, or sobbing his heart out.

Minerva’s mother died in March. Christina and Lysander Bones were murdered by Death Eaters. The daughter Lily didn’t even know they had is now an orphan in Amelia Bones’s care. Someone set off a magical bomb in the Ministry on first May. Minerva’s baby brother Malcolm, a man who Lily had been surprised to find herself befriending, died in the first battles of June.

July has been the worst month of war to date. The last battle wasn’t the last fight of July, but it was so massive and horrific that the later skirmishes looked like spitting contests in comparison. The Order lost Marinus Burke, Arnice Weasley, his wife Ginevra, and their adopted daughter Priscilla, among many others who also worked in the M.L.E. Five of the Death Eaters who died during that battle were so young, just out of Hogwarts and with no real idea of what they were getting themselves into.

Benjy is believed dead because she was literally blown off the battlefield, leaving actual pieces of herself behind. The Underground’s medic was able to regrow and repair everything before it was too late, but Benjy still needed time to recover from the shock. Benjy then chose to stay “dead” and help the Underground.

Septimus Weasley and Elphin Urquhart were both badly injured in that same battle. Septimus scared the hell out of everyone by nearly dying in St. Mungo’s before he started to recover. Elphin wasn’t at death’s door, but he’s worse off in terms of his health. He beat the poison, but he can’t fight in the war any longer. Lily thinks about how much Elphin must hate seeing Minerva go off without him, just like Lily hated seeing James and Sirius go off to fight without her.

You-Know-Who skipped Imbolc this year because his intent is to amp up the violence, to make things steadily worse until Hallowe’en. That’s when he plans to claim another victory by murdering his prophesized competition.

“And it’s going to be Harry. Yeah, that was my limit. Excuse me.” James bolts for the ground floor bathroom down the hall.

“I’ve an anti-nausea potion, if you’d prefer it,” Saul offers.

Lily shakes her head. “No. No, if…if I’m going to be sick over this, then I want to feel it. I know that sounds stupid. I just…it makes it real.”

“It isn’t stupid.” Saul is exhausted, Lily realizes. She wonders how long he’s looked that way, and if Harry and Elizabetha worried about him while Saul was building his den of spies. “I would feel similarly.”

Lily nods, thinking she should be so angry, raging. Instead, she’s sitting quietly, letting her stomach churn along with her thoughts. She got so used to sitting, to letting Tuney rage, trying to show her sister that she wasn’t the threat or the freak Petunia declared her to be. Then Lily realized that enough was sodding well enough, got loud again, and lost her sister. Maybe she’d lost Tuney already, and just wasn’t ready to admit it.

“Your mental shielding could use some work, too.” Saul grants her a brief smile when Lily focuses on his face. “Even though you were not quite meeting my gaze, I could still tell that you were thinking of your sister. She was in the wrong, Lily. Petunia Evans Dursley was wrong on first September 1971, and she’s still wrong now.”

Lily tries to patch up her mental walls, but her Occlumency training was a rushed thing. “How do you know what happened on—no, you’ve already said that you were there. You had to be, since you saved Harry that day.”

“I was also looking for certain faces, and of course, I wanted to see the family.” Saul looks sad. “I’ve never understood why another being would choose to hate those who love them.”

“If I—maybe if I hadn’t been born a witch…” Lily starts to say, but she doesn’t want that. She likes who she is, loves the world she lives in now. She has a cottage that runs on a blend of electricity and magic, two wonderful spouses she would never have been allowed to marry if they’d all been Muggles, and a beautiful son with James’s impossible hair, Lily’s emerald-fire eyes, and Sirius’s charming smile.

“Would it truly have changed anything?” Saul asks her. “Think on the person Petunia Dursley was before magic came into your life, before there was a Hogwarts. Were you really going to be a pair of sisters who adored each other?”

“I thought we were.” Lily’s voice has gone wobbly. She sniffs and then wipes at her nose. “I thought we were so close. I shared everything with her.”

“Did she share everything with you?”

Lily hates that more tears drip down her face. “No. She didn’t. I just…I thought Petunia was just being an older sister. She wasn’t, though. She was always—she’s selfish. She’s always been selfish. She wanted anything that I had, but if it was me, the same didn’t happen in reverse. She’s like Peter. She just cares about herself.”

“I think, perhaps, that she cares about Dudley Dursley,” Saul says after a moment. “I haven’t seen it for myself, but having a child changes your life. Petunia Dursley could easily have chosen to be rid of a pregnancy instead of birthing her son.”

“You seem to know a lot about my sister.”

“I know a great many things about a vast number of people,” Saul counters. “For example, you wish to know why Peter Pettigrew wouldn’t tell you about the worsening state of the war.”

“I wasn’t even thinking about that. No, I was,” Lily realizes. “Just not right then.”

“A spy reads expressions and body language,” Saul explains. “That wasn’t a thought uncovered, just an obvious bit of signaling. As to why he wouldn’t tell you? Tactics, Lily. If you and James believed the war was not as bad as it was before you were forced to hide under a Fidelius Charm, you would lower your guard. Your caution would lessen. You would not fear as much for yourselves, or for your son.”

Lily blinks a few times. “You’re right. We were doing exactly that. We should’ve hexed you within an inch of your life the moment we realized you weren’t Peter.”

“I was rather surprised you didn’t do exactly that.” Saul grins. “Relieved, too, as I wasn’t in much of a mood to be hexed, but still surprised. I’m glad now to know why.”

James comes stumbling back into the kitchen. He gets a glass of water from the sink and returns to the table. He looks as if he’s aged ten years in ten minutes, and it makes Lily’s heart ache.

“Why did you tell us about Peter?” James coughs and takes another sip of water. “You said you had many things to tell us that we wouldn’t like, but why start there? Isn’t that diving off into the deep end? We still have a Pensieve to dive into as it is!”

“I told you about Peter Pettigrew because that is how our conversation unfolded. I also told you about him because I believe the rat is not going to be the worst thing you learn of tonight.”

“Well, that’s auspicious,” James mutters.

Saul crosses his arms and leans against the kitchen counter again, sighing. His voice is surprisingly quiet when he speaks again. “Time can be a circle. One event happens, and so another must be. I once had two siblings. Now I have only one. My sister Estefania was born of my parents, younger than myself. Our younger brother was magically adopted, an event that took place after the deaths of our parents.”

“What does magically adopted mean?” Lily asks.

“Your wedding was legally binding in Wizarding Britain, but you, James, and Sirius were also bound by magic. A magical adoption is similar; the adoptee is bound to a new family by magic and spirit, and often gains magical traits from those who adopted them,” Saul explains. Lily thinks he sounds like a teacher, one who would be kind instead of stern. “The children of the adoptee will be part of the family who adopted their parent, no matter what came before. Magic has never cared overly much about biological genealogy.”

James has the Auror Look on his face, like he’s just realized there is a puzzle staring him in the face, and he only needs to find one more piece to solve it. “What was your brother’s name? How did you meet?”

“My brother’s name is Nizar. It’s a Basque adoption of an Arabic name. Estefania and myself were the children of a Euskaran father and a Castilian mother, and held to the magical traditions of both our families. Nizar came to us in a way that we all once believed to be impossible. When we first met, I was twenty, and he was fifteen.”

Saul looks at them and then _hisses_. Lily jerk back in surprise; James spills what’s left of his water. The serpent in the heated dish perks up and looks around.

“You’re a Parselmouth.” James takes several gasping breaths that double as laughter. “A bit of warning next time would be nice.”

That Marauder-like smirk is back on Saul’s face. “Too many fear the language of serpents, and yet it’s only that: a language. Just because You-Know-Who is a bloody Parselmouth doesn’t make a language evil. The bastard also speaks English, yet no one has decided the English language to be evil because of it.”

Lily hates to admit, even to herself, that she never really thought of it that way. “What did you say that got the garden snake’s attention?”

“I said that James’s great-grandfather was a Parselmouth.”

James blinks a few times. “Oh. Shit?”

Saul seems amused by James’s baffled response. “That is something only his children knew. Henry later informed Elizabetha, and Charles shared that secret with Dorea. When he felt the time was right, Henry told Monty, and later, Euphemia. The night Henry learned my real name, he told me, as well. You, however, had some rather bad habits during your Hogwarts years that precluded you being told.”

James winces. “That’s really putting it too mildly. I was an arse.”

Saul dips his head in agreement. “When I first met my brother, it was to encounter a speaker of Parseltongue, the first I’d found outside my father’s bloodline. Later, we would learn that we did share familial blood, though it was a distant connection. My brother’s name was not Nizar when we met, but for the magical adoption, he asked me to choose something new. Nizar wanted…” Saul grimaces. “He hates when I speak of it, so I will not be specific. My brother’s life before our meeting had been harsh beyond belief, and I say that as a man who was asked to stand as a war mage to his kingdom at the age of twelve to replace my recently deceased father.”

“You were a war mage?” James asks in wide-eyed disbelief.

“It isn’t nearly as glamorous as the legends would have you think,” Saul responds. “We are not discussing that at the moment, anyway. You asked of my brother, and of magical adoptions. I claimed Nizar out of a fierce desire for his life never again to be what it was, to let him choose his path instead of what others had demanded of him.”

“You loved him.” Lily knows she isn’t imagining the depth of feeling in his eyes, the way his entire being seems to light up as he speaks of his brother. “I mean, before the adoption. You loved him the day you met.”

Saul inclines his head again. “I did, and I do. James, your invisibility cloak. You should fetch it.”

James finishes sopping up the rest of his spilled water with a Summoned tea towel. “Why?”

“Before we go into that Pensieve, this should begin the way it did with your parents and your grandparents—with certain implausibilities established as truths.”

When James manages to Summon his cloak instead of having to retrieve it from Harry’s room, Lily glares at him. “Why can’t _I_ do that?”

James shrugs. “I dunno.”

“I do.” Saul mimics James’s shrug when they look at him. “You may be James’s wife, but you’re not of Peverell blood. More specifically, you’re not of the line of Peverell to whom this cloak was granted.”

Lily sits upright. “It isn’t just a nursery tale, is it?”

“Truths do not begin their existence as watered-down tales for children.” Saul approaches the stacked trays from his box on the kitchen table, picking up the gossamer fabric Lily noticed earlier. He lays it across the table opposite the happy garden snake in its warm bowl. “Very few understand how unique that cloak truly is, do they?”

James hesitates, and Lily tries not to snort at such an obvious sign of guilt. How he, Sirius, Remus, and Peter got away with _anything_ in Hogwarts is still unbelievable. “It’s just an invisibility cloak.”

Saul smiles. “You and I both know that the magic on a standard cloak of invisibility wears off after several years, but that same cloak has been in your family since January of the year 1235.”

James goes still. “What did you want with my cloak?”

Saul picks up the diaphanous fabric he laid across the table and then drops it again. “A very long time ago, my brother placed this cloak into my hands, saying I would have more need of it than he until we met again.” Saul steps away from the table. “I asked you to fetch yours so that you could compare them.”

Lily watches as James hesitates, and then his expression hardens into determination. He lays his cloak on the table next to the one Saul revealed. He runs the fabric of each one between his fingers, picking it up to watch how the light plays through the gossamer folds. Then he picks up Saul’s cloak with both hands, revealing a faint pattern that is only visible when James’s invisibility cloak isn’t being worn. Lily thinks that the two cloaks look eerily similar, but then James shocks her.

“They’re exactly alike. Aren’t they?”

“That they are,” Saul replies.

James scowls. “The story’s just a bloody myth!”

“It absolutely is not,” Saul retorts. “I should know. I gave that cloak to Ignotus Peverell myself. Not that he knew it was me; I never told him afterwards, either. I was acting on another’s behalf.” Saul gentles his voice. “The fourth way of cheating death, James. Granting three items not of this Earth to three brothers named Peverell was my trade.”

Lily stares at Saul. She knows the tale. She’s read it to Harry several times already, along with the rest of the old wizarding nursery tales, mixing them up with the Muggle versions of the Brothers Grimm, Dr. Seuss, and Shel Silverstein. “You made your trade with Death. You asked Death not to die. Death as in a real entity, not an event.”

“Yes, the real entity,” Saul replies, but his voice is hushed, full of a quiet respect tinged by fear. “Some things…some things are beyond us. Death might have existed before we did, or perhaps humanity’s collective consciousness made them real. Either way, they are indeed a real entity. Except for a few variations here and there, the nursery tale printed in Wizarding books regarding the Deathly Hallows is exactly the way it happened. They’ve never included the prophecy, though. I never spoke of it to another living soul.”

James holds up his own cloak and stares at it. “You mean this isn’t just something Ignotus invented, and stories later made up an origin to explain it. This is…”

“It is Death’s own Cloak of Invisibility,” Saul says, and Lily believes him. The truth is in his lack of smugness, which might have irritated her. It’s the weary grief on his face as he speaks of granting three brothers a Cloak, a Wand, and a Stone. “This is what I was told, and this is how I found them.

“ _During a fell winter_

_Brothers three will cross paths with thee_

_Meant to die,_

_Yet still they will live_

_One more chance they will have_

_Before each meets their end_.

“I had already met the three brothers the previous autumn. I was living in the village of Ducey at the time, in northern France. Antioch of Ravenclaw, Cadmus of Slytherin, and Ignotus of Gryffindor, all born and raised in a village which had already come to be known as Godric’s Hollow. They came to France after Ignotus finished his schooling at Hogwarts. Their intention was to travel south and visit far off places, a pilgrimage meant to distract Cadmus from the grief of recently losing his betrothed to terrible circumstance. Instead, they wintered in Ducey when the storms came early that year, as did several others.

“Antioch had a temper, and a penchant for dueling others over ridiculous offences, but he never killed anyone. Cadmus overcame his grief, courting and becoming betrothed to another magician, a future teacher at the new school of Beauxbatons. Ignotus was the quiet one who watched for clues and weighed the evidence before him. He figured out who I was at first meeting, but said nothing of my identity to anyone else, not for the rest of his life. Ignotus Peverell was my friend, and for a brief time, he was also my apprentice, refining his talents to claim his Mastery of Magical Making.”

“You’re eight hundred years old?” James blurts out in disbelief.

Saul is startled into laughing aloud. “That’s what you’re taking from this tale? It’s a good guess, but no. I’m not eight hundred years old.”

“Right.” James raises an eyebrow, looking from one Cloak to the other. “So…you impersonated Death, because Death asked you to, so that you wouldn’t die.”

“Correct.”

“And Death gave you a spare Cloak of Invisibility,” James says, but even he sounds like he doesn’t believe it.

Saul shakes his head. “I told you that my brother placed this Cloak into my hands, James. I also told you when we began that I would tell you of many things you would not like. Time is a circle, and at times, that circle is not kind. You already know that it’s the same Cloak, James. It’s just a bit older than the version you’re holding now.”

“Okay.” James takes a breath. “How?”

“In the year 1043, I made a deal with the Aspect called Death to not age or die until I’d seen the bane at the end of my direct bloodline defeated in battle by the one destined to vanquish him. I could have worded that bargain more carefully than I did, but the circumstances required to gain Death’s attention are often upsetting.”

“1043,” James repeats. “That was nine hundred thirty-eight bloody years ago.”

Lily can scarcely comprehend what she’s just heard. “You would have seen so much.”

“I have,” Saul agrees. “Some of it was glorious. Some of it was not.”

“Bane at the end of your line.” Lily sucks in a breath. “You knew about You-Know-Who.”

“I did.” Saul’s brow furrows. “We all did.”

“Back to _how_ again,” James says, wide-eyed.

“Your grandfather on that tape did mention that I’m a Seer,” Saul replies, but Lily doesn’t think that’s the whole of it. He isn’t lying, but the explanation is too simple.

James is plucking at the Cloaks again, as if he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands. “How old were you when you made that deal?”

“Now you’re thinking like an Auror,” Saul murmurs. “I was seventy-three.”

Lily counts backwards in her head. That would mean Saul was born in 970, or maybe 969 if he hadn’t reached his birthday yet.

It’s impossible. Except she’s staring at a man who looks so tired. Henry, Elizabetha, Monty, and Euphemia had all believed in him. They had all loved him.

 _Nicholas Flamel has a Philosopher’s Stone that gives him eternal life and unlimited wealth_ , Lily reminds herself scornfully. This is not actually all that different.

“You can’t be,” James says flatly.

Saul raises both eyebrows, amused. “Can’t be what?”

“You can’t be _him_ ,” James insists, leaving Lily to irritably wonder exactly who _him_ is supposed to be.

No. Focus. Lily bites her lip and runs it through again.

Not to age or die until the bane of his line is ended by the one destined to defeat him. Bane at the end of his line. Destined. Prophesized.

Lily stares at Saul in disbelief. “You’re Salazar Slytherin?” She hates that her voice sounds so faint and small, like a child asking why Father Christmas isn’t real.

Saul actually gapes at her. “Did we not just have that conversation?”

Lily is thrown from disbelief to wanting to giggle. She isn’t certain if that counts as hysteria or not. “Fine. What do _you_ consider to be your name?”

“And where the hell are you from?” James asks. “You sound like a Spaniard that lingered in the Highlands before being dragged through France, Russia, and maybe the whole of northern Africa.”

“With significant stretches of time spent in Persia, Imperial China while it was still called such, a few other kingdoms in East Asia, Greece, the Americas, France, and a bit of time spent in Norway to watch the aurora borealis,” Saul adds. “But: I was born in Burgos, a child of Castile and of the Euskaldunak. Of late, I’ve spent most of my time in England. As for my name…”

Saul’s bow is graceful fluidity, something so outdated Lily hasn’t even seen an uptight Pure-blood use it. “I am Salazar Fernan, Marqués de León, Casa de Deslizarse de Castile y León, Gipuzkoa, y Moravia. In England, I have used Salazar Fernan Deslizarse, but Deslizarse is the modern form of a very old word. Casa de Deslizarse is in truth properly translated as the Ancient House of Serpents.”

“That’s impossible.”

Saul glances down at the matched Invisibility Cloaks. “It is not impossible, James. Merely improbable.”

A sense of utter dread envelops Lily, eating that ridiculous urge to giggle. “Then there really is an Heir of Slytherin, and it’s You-Know-Who.”

Saul looks annoyed. “While it’s true that he is a direct descendant, I do not claim that vile, arrogant prick. And that is not quite correct. I named my brother as my Heir early in our lives, and I’ve never revoked his authority to act as Heir on behalf of our House. Therefore, there are two Heirs of Slytherin on this isle.”

“How? I just…” James shakes his head. “How can _any_ of this be real?”

Saul gestures at the Pensieve. “I suppose there is only one way to find out, isn’t there?”


	34. Perceived in Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry Potter proves, one more time, that he is a devious bastard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last of the trifecta of fic-chapter-posting for my family's holiday weekend. Happy Wintereenmas (and/or your holiday of choice or lack thereof); may things suck a bit less for everyone in the coming year.
> 
> Beta-flail by @norcumii <3

James can’t remember the last time he was this nervous. He wasn’t even this nervous when he got married. That had just felt like it was right, an easy position to slide into, husband to Lily Evans and Sirius Black. Putting on fancy clothes and making it official with magic, documents, and witnesses just made it better.

Maybe when he was waiting for someone to come upstairs the summer after his fifth year. He was definitely a nervous fucking wreck that day.

His hand is shaking as he pours in the first memory. Aside from knowing about the family Pensieve’s existence, he’s only used a Pensieve once before, a swift Auror bootcamp on how to identify one, how to retrieve a memory, how to view a memory, and how to collect it again. They hadn’t even covered how to store a memory, it had been such a rush job. At least he still knows that the first phial, its misty contents denser than the other, means that it holds a _lot_ of collected memory.

James nearly drops the second phial right into the collected mist before he makes his fingers clamp down. No. He isn’t screwing up. Not today. This is too important. His grandfather gave up these memories just so James and Lily (and Sirius) would know for certain that everything they see and hear is true.

“Are you ready?” James asks Lily, hating that his voice emerges so scratchy and raw. Lily has looked shell-shocked since they listened to the little mini-recorder device filled with his family’s last words. He wants to reassure her, and he doesn’t know how.

James grips the edge of the table. _God, Sirius. I really need you here right now_.

“I’m okay. I’m ready,” Lily says. “I’ve set an alarm with my wand. If Harry wakes up, we’ll know it, even in the Pensieve. Saul?”

For all of Saul’s casual bravado regarding the Pensieve, he doesn’t look enthused. In fact, he looks like he’d rather do anything else in the world than view these memories.

“Why don’t you want to see them?”

Saul glances at James. “Because I know what they are. Your grandfather granted you a copied viewing of _my_ memories, James. Not all of them are pleasant recollections.”

“What are they going to be for us, then?” Lily asks.

Saul hesitates over his answer. “Revelatory.”

As they enter the Pensieve, one at a time, James realizes that Saul hadn’t really answered them at all.

They land in a park. It’s daytime. Birds are singing from a few sparse trees, or maybe the bushes.

Then James sees his grandfather. “Oh,” he breathes in surprise. James has only ever seen Harry Simon Potter look this young in photographs. Even though the Nazi uniform is awful, James is still _seeing_ his grandfather. This is a memory from Granddad’s military intelligence service during the European Wizarding War.

“Oh, _fuck!_ ” is Saul’s rather more alarmed response. “The two of you, please recall that you’re in a memory, and that you cannot be harmed.”

“Why?” Lily is still glancing around with quick, inquisitive eyes, looking beyond the park to see the buildings and the people strolling down the walkways. Then her eyes come back to Granddad, who suddenly looks as alarmed as Saul sounds. “What’s that noise?”

Then James hears it. It sounds like a whistle from far off, and it’s getting louder.

“We’re about to be hit by a bomb,” Saul informs them. Then everything explodes.

James absolutely does indeed fucking panic.

Somewhere in the chaos of falling dirt, rocks, clumps of glass, and a bloody park _bench_ falling towards him, James finds Lily’s hand. Lily finds Saul, and then they’re all standing in a brand-new crater of torn up rock, dirt, and rubble. Two men are lying in the mess. One is Granddad, who is lifting his head in wide-eyed shock.

The other man is Saul, his hair solid black, his face clean-shaven, wearing a beige suit—which is now filthy, thanks to the park bloody well exploding. With the beard gone, it’s a _lot_ more obvious that James looks like Saul. That isn’t going to stop being weird anytime soon.

The dazed Saul in the ditch lifts his head. “ _Mis dioses_.”

Granddad spits out what looks like a pebble. “You can certainly say that again, please and thank you.”

Their eyes meet, and Saul’s eyes widen. He sits up in a hurry, but James doesn’t understand why.

“Family magic. I could feel it,” the Saul standing next to him says. “It seems your grandfather also decided to show you how we met. Welcome to Nuremberg, Nazi Germany, June 1943.”

“ _Bastarde!_ ” a young voice yells. James can’t see where it’s coming from, but Lily shrieks when a live grenade lands on the ground between Saul and Granddad.

“Oh—fuck _me_ ,” Other-Saul bites out, and then he _throws himself over the fucking grenade_.

“Oh, God!” James gasps as he watches Saul get thrown up into the air from the blast just before he slams back down onto his side. The blood is immediate, messy and horrific. “If you hadn’t done that, Granddad would be dead!”

“He would have been, yes,” Saul agrees in a mild voice. “That bloody well hurt, but it was worth it.”

James has no idea what Granddad says next, but it’s obvious he’s angry. “ _Ihr Narren! Du weißt nicht was du getan hast!_ ”

“Henry forgot the translation spell.” Saul watches the scene with a sort of blank-eyed detachment. “Fortunately, I did not, so his memories of what comes later will include it.”

“What are you doing?” James asks, watching as Granddad shoots at the people who just tried to kill him. He had no idea his grandfather ever used a Muggle pistol. “You look…well, you look stoned.”

“I’m doing what you would call Occluding, but to an extreme extent. I still have nightmares about this city.”

“Oh.” James feels stupid, but then he also feels guilty. He used to ask for stories about the European Wizarding War, all the time, and Granddad would indulge him. He’s old enough now to realize that Granddad was sugarcoating the _hell_ out of everything, but never once did James think that maybe his grandfather wouldn’t want to talk about the war. That he might go to bed that night and lie awake, thinking on how terrible it all was.

That’s what James has done so often since he started fighting in the British Wizarding War. He lies awake, staring at the ceiling, and thinks about all of the people he’s seen die.

Granddad rolls over the other Saul. “My God, I feared you dead already.”

Other-Saul lifts his head just long enough to see the large red stain spreading across his shirt and suit jacket. “Alas, you’ll have to tolerate me for a bit longer.”

“We have to find a medic,” Granddad insists, snatching Saul up from the ground like he weighs nothing. James feels his heart ache at the sight. He never got to see his grandfather when he was that strong in life. Granddad was already sixty-eight when James was born, and as James got older and taller, Harry Simon Potter became frailer. “My healing spells were never much good for anything.”

“Start speaking German again before someone bloody notices,” Other-Saul grumbles at him. “Idiot. Do you not know what they do to spies in this country?”

“ _Wirf Granaten auf ihnen, es scheint,_ ” Granddad says in a dry voice.

“ _Logischer Punkt._ ”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Saul mouthing the words in English under his breath. “Throw grenades at them, it seems. Logical point.” James doesn’t think Saul is even aware that he’s doing it.

“ _Ich hatte nicht erwartet dich so zu finden, Saul Luiz_.”

The bleeding Saul that Granddad is carrying forgets his German. “You know who I am?”

“I was sent here to find you, actually,” Granddad tells him. “You’re considered valuable enough to both our leaders that they wanted to know if you were alive, dead, or had decided upon a convenient exchange of priorities.”

“What a fanciful way of saying traitor,” Saul mumbles, and passes out. Granddad swears quietly about the unconscious man bleeding to death in his arms and breaks into a shuffling jog. He gets stopped by other Nazi soldiers often, probably because of his uniform. They get told off in rapid-fire German, and James doesn’t need a translator for that. It’s kind of obvious that Granddad’s priority is saving Other-Saul’s life, and bugger anyone who gets in his way.

“Why are they calling you Fernan Suero?” Lily asks curiously. She also seems detached, but Lily’s not Occluding. James squeezes her hand, gaining her attention, and smiles when she looks at him. A bit of clarity and focus comes back to Lily’s green eyes, and James’s heart decides it’s okay to beat normally again.

“It was the name I used among the Nazi officers. Saul Luiz was reserved for the magical side of the war,” Saul murmurs.

“ _Zein modu bitxia hitzak erabiltzeko_ ,” Other-Saul mumbles in that same unknown language Saul had used to say something in the kitchen earlier.

“Euskaran,” Saul explains with a faint smile. “I was a bit delirious. I said, ‘What a way you have with words.’ Then I asked your grandfather his name.”

Granddad looks grim. “Harry.”

For some reason, that causes Other-Saul to gape up at Granddad in shock. “Hari? Really?”

“Hari?” Lily repeats, intrigued by the difference in pronunciation.

“Truly,” Granddad says before anyone else can speak. “Well, it’s Henry Simon Potter, if you wish to be formal. First lieutenant, first battalion of the combined wizard and Muggle infiltration forces under the joint command of Minister for Magic Spencer-Moon and Prime Minister Churchill.”

“Hari,” Other-Saul says again, and starts giggling. Then he grunts in pain, teeth clenched, but it still doesn’t stop him from laughing.

“I’ve read that blood loss makes a man giddy, but this is excessive,” Granddad comments. “Do cease that at once and tell me how to find a medic in this godforsaken city!”

Other-Saul wheezes out an address in German. That’s followed by a brief discussion of maps, and how the bombing raid was not only performed at the wrong time, the bombs fell in the wrong place.

Lily is shaking her head. “How could they get it so wrong? All of those people!”

“It happened often,” Saul says, swallowing hard. “It was worse in 1944. By 1945, it was a nightmare. It didn’t matter if you were asleep or awake. The Allies never seemed to hit their targets in Nuremberg until after Allied forces were on the ground in the city.”

“But—but they were civilians!” Lily yells, outraged. James almost misses Granddad retrieving a coin, a Port Key, from Other-Saul’s jacket pocket. When the Port Key activates, they’re suddenly inside a house’s sitting room, stripped barren and liberally coated in dust. James suspects that it’s been left that way on purpose; nobody would want anything to do with a house that already seems derelict. Thieves would be looking for valuables and gold; civilians would maybe be looking for supplies.

Poor Other-Saul in Granddad’s arms sicks up when they arrive. A Port Key was probably hell on that injury.

Saul glances at Lily. He might be Occluding, but he still looks haunted. “Yes, they were civilians. Many were families who died together when the bombs fell. So many of the dead were children.”

“But they were the Allies! _Our_ Allies! The British RAF!” Lily protests.

“Yes. They were our Allies.” Saul sounds so damned— _desolate_.

“Oh, now what the fuck is this?” The man asking that question is very Irish, and is staring at Saul and Granddad in disbelief. “A Nazi, and—Saul? What the hell happened to you?”

Granddad all but rolls his eyes. “Young man, I believe that is rather obvious. Fetch your medic, and do it quickly, or they might not have anyone to save when they arrive.”

“Right. Yeah. I’m off to find her,” the Irishman responds, and Disapparates with a crack.

“Better,” Granddad declares. James watches Granddad neatly gain himself a table in the kitchen on which to place his wounded savior. “That will have to do for the moment. Even with magical healing, a good medic should have water nearby. You, sir, are quite the mess.”

“And?” Lily asks, after taking a brief look around what must have been a spy’s safehouse. “They were our Allies, and?”

“And our Allies were angry,” Saul replies. “Anger is very much like fear. Angry people sometimes do rash things, actions that they later regret. Or they may not. Some recognize their folly. Others refuse to ever do so.”

“Henry Potter.” The Saul on the table is smiling. He looks like a man who has just accomplished the impossible. “I’ve been looking for you for quite a while, also.”

“Do be quiet, Saul Luiz,” Granddad chides him. “That is…you Spaniards must be a stubborn lot. I honestly don’t know how it is you’re still breathing.”

Saul obliges Granddad by passing out again. That probably wasn’t all that reassuring at the time.

“And did you? Did you recognize your folly and regret it?” Lily asks, and James whirls around.

“What? What are you talking about, Lily?”

Lily is glaring at Saul. “I’m talking about Pure-blood ideology. _His_ ideology!”

Saul only smiles. “Darling Lily: by Wizarding Britain’s standards, I’m a Half-blood. So was my sister, and so is my brother.”

That leaves Lily gaping, and James is feeling _really_ daft. His parents told him not to trust _Hogwarts: A History_ , and then he’d gone and done it anyway.

Then his attention is recaptured by Granddad’s memory, because Other-Saul is on the table and shrieking as Granddad presses his bundled-up officer’s jacket against Saul’s massive bleeding injury. “Fuck, what the hell—!”

Granddad glares at Other-Saul. “There is absolutely no need for that sort of language.”

“The fuck there isn’t!” Other-Saul’s voice is high-pitched with pain. “One of those fucking rank pins is in my bloody spleen, dammit!”

Granddad hesitates. “Well, I’ll grant you that _bloody_ is quite accurate.”

Other-Saul and Granddad stare at each other before they both collapse into near-hysterical laughter.

The Saul standing with James and Lily begins to smile. “I’d forgotten that. I don’t actually recall much from this day. For me, the first part is the clearest.”

“I’ve heard the Allies have shot men for that!” Other-Saul gasps out.

“I’d most likely deserve it,” Granddad agrees, but he hasn’t let up pressure on that grenade wound. “You’re a special sort of man, aren’t you, Saul Luiz?”

“You’ve no idea.”

“But I’d very much like to find out,” Granddad responds. “You’ve survived this long, Saul. You had best not die on me before a healer or a medic arrives!”

The expression on Other-Saul’s face, a faintly furrowed brow, a distant look in his eyes, and the resignation—it’s the same expression that was on his face when Saul suggested they should listen to the recordings on the tiny cassette recorder before discussing anything else. “Henry. Hari.” Other-Saul looks briefly frustrated. “There is no need for any healer to rush.” He swallows, making a pained sound. “I literally cannot die.”

Granddad draws back from the table, his eyes narrowing, though James notices he doesn’t let up on his impromptu pressure bandage. “I didn’t realize Wizarding Britain would rely on a spy who would dare to use the darkest of magics.”

“What?” Other-Saul stares at Granddad in bleary-eyed confusion. “No. No Horcrux. S’foul. It’s an…an entirely different sort of curse.” Then he drops right back down onto the table, unconscious again.

“I’m sure my grandfather found that _very_ reassuring,” James says wryly.

“I’ve no idea. I was unconscious for quite a bit,” Saul responds. It doesn’t matter; the memory is fading, shifting them into something else, somewhere else.

Lily sounds disturbed. “What’s a Horcrux?”

“You’ll find out, and you’ll not like it—this, too?” Saul sounds surprised as they find themselves inside a brightly lit home that reminds James of his cottage, just a bit, though this sitting room’s space has been greatly expanded, the old Tudor-style timbers a small part of the interior décor instead of prominent. Large windows let in most of the light, revealing a sunny English countryside beyond them.

“Where are we?” Lily is watching as one woman tugs another in the direction of a hallway.

“Oh, gods,” this memory of Other-Saul says. He’s watching those two women as they wander off. He looks almost exactly the same, if healed of the grenade blast. His suit appears to be the same one that was blood-soaked until James peers closer and notices different stitching.

Granddad looks to be the same age as well. It’s seeing Gran, Aunt Dorea, and Uncle Charles that shocks him. They’re all but baby-faced, even Gran, and she would’ve been in her mid-forties at the time.

“This is the Willow House. My home,” Saul tells them, and then Aunt Dorea is talking.

“Truthfully, is there anything else I should know?” Aunt Dorea asks Saul. She sounds so _young_. “This will be a good way to spend my time when Charles follows Harry to Europe.”

“Which I still think is a foolish idea,” Granddad says flatly.

Uncle Charles rolls his eyes. “I have no plans on dying for any Nazi, Muggle or Wizarding.”

Next to James, Saul makes a pained noise. “Oh, if only that had remained true.”

James contemplates sicking up again. Uncle Charles had been killed by Death Eaters, but there really isn’t much difference between their lot and Grindelwald’s lot.

“Besides, maybe I’ll have a returning war hero’s luck and actually manage to get my wife pregnant!” Uncle Charles declares.

Granddad snorts. “If that actually worked, you would have a nephew older than you are.”

Aunt Dorea seems resigned to Uncle Charles leaving to fight in the European Wizarding War. “Well, Saul? I’d prefer to be honest with Alexis as much as is possible. That poor woman. Alexis was such a rock before this happened, wasn’t she?”

“She was exactly that, but every rock can be shattered. I am hoping this is a temporary sort of shattering, but it was far too dangerous to chance allowing her to recover in Germany.”

“What happened to her?” James asks, assuming that Alexis must have been one of the two women who went down the hallway, out of the memory’s range of sight.

“Fucking Nazis,” Saul mutters. Actual sparks of emerald green and silver briefly appear at his eyes.

“So Harry has said,” Aunt Dorea agrees with Other-Saul, sighing. “The house, then?”

“The Willow House is under a Loyalty Charm, hence the rather long phrase I taught you all before we walked down the path,” Saul explains. “You’ll not be bothered by nosy neighbors. Please do not invite anyone here, not even by Floo, unless they are standing in this room right now. I will own no elves, who are meant to be free beings, so any supplies you require will have to be retrieved by Floo, and should be sent only by Elizabetha or Marie. Otherwise, you’ll have naught to concern yourself with but for the nosy bugger who is trying to peer around the frame behind me without being seen.”

“Tale-teller,” another voice says, though Other-Saul doesn’t turn around to look. James and Lily do, and find a portrait hanging on the wall. The man painted in it looks astonishingly like both Saul and James—more like himself, if James is being honest, but between the three of them, it’s the eyes, noses, and skin color that really stand out as the differences. The portrait is still young, though, maybe twenty years old at most, whereas Saul, both then and now, looks significantly older.

“I suppose you must be the mysterious Henry my brother mentioned,” the portrait says.

“He’s a talkative one,” Lily observes.

Saul smiles. “You’ve no idea.”

Granddad greets the portrait politely. “I am. Henry Simon Potter is my name, though I most often go by Harry. This is my wife, Elizabetha. Dorea is our dear sister through her marriage to my brother Charlus, though he much prefers Charles. Who are you, then? You look a great deal like Saul, but that nose of yours is a bit different than his.”

“Unless you’ve since Transfigured it,” Gran teases Salazar, who seems to find that charming.

“I am Nizar, Sal’s younger brother. Alas that I myself am unavailable, and you’re stuck with a bit of canvas instead,” the portrait replies. “And no, there is no oddity regarding our differing names. We are Spanish and Basque, and our Euskaran family remembers the Arabic influence in Iberia quite well.”

“So I see. It’s fascinating to meet you,” Aunt Dorea says. The portrait studies Aunt Dorea with interest, but Granddad is doing the same to the portrait.

“Are you…” The portrait of Nizar tilts his head. “You have familiar features, particularly your eyes. Were you a Black before your marriage?”

Aunt Dorea grimaces a bit. “I was, yes. Dorea Aurora Black, sister of Pollux, Marius, Cassiopeia, and Walburga, though my poor older brother Marius was cast out for being a Squib before I could ever know him properly, and I’ve no idea what became of him. My family has not disowned me the way they did him, but they do not speak to me if they can avoid it because I married Charles.”

“I am very sorry for their behavior towards you,” the portrait says formally. “I hope you’ve found the happiness you deserve among the family surrounding you now.”

“Oh, now I certainly believe them to be brothers.” Granddad chuckles. “They both have the same silver tongues.”

“Practice makes perfect,” the portrait replies blithely. “How did you happen to meet my brother, Henry?”

“I was sent to retrieve him for a long overdue debriefing. We found each other when a bomb landed in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then some of the locals decided to take advantage of the opportunity the explosions provided, and attempted to rid Nuremberg of two more assumed Nazis with a grenade.”

“With a grenade.” The portrait’s expression morphs into a full-blown glower that he directs at Saul. “You did something stupid, didn’t you?”

“Would you rather the man be dead, little brother?”

The portrait sighs and looks at Henry. “He threw himself atop the grenade, didn’t he.”

Granddad smiles and nods. “I did appreciate that such an act likely saved my life, though the idea of having to report back to my superiors that the man I’d been sent to retrieve was deceased was something I did _not_ look forward to. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary. I carried him to a safe place with a capable medic myself.”

The portrait raises both eyebrows before bowing in gratitude. “Thank you for doing so, Henry Potter. As for you, _idiota_ , I am yelling at you later.”

“Please reserve the yelling for the end of the war,” Saul replies.

The memory is shifting again. Saul doesn’t seem surprised. “And that would be your grandfather introducing you to my brother.”

“Only by portrait, though. A young one, at that,” Lily says.

Saul sighs. “Unfortunately, it’s the only way your family was able to meet him. My brother was not in jest when he said he wasn’t available.”

“Dreamless Sleep?” It’s the first thing James can think of that might preserve someone throughout the centuries, while also leaving them…well, unavailable.

Saul holds up his hand and makes some sort of gesture that freezes the Pensieve right in the middle of changing the scenery. James has no idea how he’s doing that, and wants to know immediately. After the question is answered, at least.

“Dreamless Sleep will not preserve the body. The victim will still wither and die, even if the process is slow. No, it was not a Horcrux either,” Saul says to Lily.

Lily frowns. “What, then? And I still don’t know what a Horcrux _is!_ ”

“The method was necessity,” Saul replies. “The answers to both questions still lie ahead. Continue, or leave the Pensieve?”

That makes Lily balk, stubbornness flaring in her eyes. “I’m staying!”

“I am, too,” James says. “I want to know.”

Saul releases whatever magical hold he’d frozen the Pensieve with. James is outside his own home, in what must be the back garden. It’s nighttime, with the Punkie Night lanterns still strung up and burning overhead.

It’s like standing in foreign territory. “Before you blew up the garden, I take it?”

“Before your grandmother took advantage of the granted opportunity to turn it into something greater, yes,” Saul answers him.

“What are you doing?” Lily asks, pointing at Other-Saul and Granddad. They’re seated across from each other. A small table is between their chairs, and on that table is a silver bowl.

“It’s Hallowe’en. Samhain. Either.” Saul uses a tilt of his head to indicate the bowl. “For most of my life, I’ve held to the tradition of scrying upon the water on this day. Anyone can come to me and ask one question, and one question only, and I’ll try to explain to them the answer they receive. The one thing you cannot ask of is the dead. Not because I won’t answer, but because there is no answer. You will see only silver mist.”

Other members of the family are all distracted by Great-Aunt Isobella, who is telling some kind of story by the way she’s gesturing with her hands. James can’t make out most of the words, though, because in this memory, Granddad’s attention is focused on Other-Saul. He does catch a glimpse of his own father, though, one of the family members who is watching Isobella with a grin on his face.

Monty Potter is maybe fifteen years old in this memory. James didn’t expect that to hurt so much.

Granddad suddenly leans forward in his chair. “Who am I to you? I’ve wanted to know since you confirmed us to be family during the summer of 1943.”

Other-Saul seems to think over the question before he picks up his wand, the same rune-carved wand that’s currently resting on James’s kitchen table. He taps the side of the silver bowl three times, the sound ringing out like the clear musical notes of a small, struck gong.

“Wow,” Lily whispers. “That’s how Divination is supposed to work?”

“I loathe your schooling,” Saul mutters. “One of many ways, yes.” He leads them closer, which allows James to see that an image is appearing on the water.

It’s the man from the portrait at the Willow House, definitely. He’s with another man who is several inches taller, beardless, with ice-blue eyes and ember-red hair. The stand together like two friends who’ve known each other for a long time. Then Nizar nudges the ginger’s arm with a smirk, and the other man laughs before wrapping his arm around Nizar’s shoulders.

“Who is that?” Granddad asks, pointing at the ginger with a baffled expression.

Other-Saul seems surprised. “Are there no portraits within Hogwarts showing her first teachers any longer?”

“The Founders, yes, though—” Granddad looks stunned. “Was that…was that Godric _Gryffindor?_ ”

“It was indeed. Not a surprising thing to see, given that you are one of Godric Gryffindor’s direct descendants. Standing with him was his apprentice, the man who became Hogewáþ’s first named teacher of Defence.”

Granddad stares at Other-Saul. “The man with Godric is the very same man I met in a portrait in your home. The man you named as Nizar, your brother.”

Other-Saul acts as if this is _entirely normal_. “Yes.”

“Hogewáþ.” Granddad repeats, and then he gives Other-Saul a sly look. “If I were to ask you your real name, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Other-Saul nods. “Only if you asked.”

“Then I won’t. I will not force such truths out into the open, strange as they are.” Granddad settles back in his chair, content with Other-Saul’s answer, whereas James feels like screaming in frustration. “Elizabetha and I saw your ring during your convalescence. We managed to keep it from Monty’s eyes, as I thought you wore it backwards for a reason…especially given how much its crest matches a very old Slytherin emblem in a very old family tapestry.”

The Saul standing with them holds up his left hand, a murmured word suddenly revealing that there is a silver ring on his left middle finger. The crest on it is an almost exact match for what James has so often seen on his family’s ancient tapestry of the four Hogwarts crests. “It was our family crest, first. All of them were.”

“The tapestry was never owned by Godric Gryffindor,” Other-Saul is saying. “It was constructed by my niece. When she was much younger, she made a similar one for her father. She must have recognized the ancestor who acquired it from her as part of our family, else Galiena wouldn’t have embedded so much of the family magic into the threads.”

“Nizar’s daughter?” Granddad swallows visibly when Other-Saul nods again. “Well. I suppose that explains a family oddity, one that is kept a close secret. Only my wife knows. Monty is still too young to be let in on that secret, especially as he’s never shown any hint of that particular bit of magic.”

Other-Saul raises an eyebrow. “Who was the Parselmouth?”

Granddad snorts and shakes his head in amusement. “Yes, I suppose it is an easy thing to guess. That would have been my father, Richard. He was so confused as a lad. The family had no idea how such a magical language could have turned up in our lineage, what with our family descended from Godric Gryffindor. Father kept it a secret from all but my mother, myself, my sister Rose, and Charles, for what you certainly know are obvious reasons.”

Other-Saul looks wistful. “Unfortunately, I am indeed well aware of that.”

Then the memory begins to change. James turns and wraps his arms around his wife, because that was so hard, and it had nothing to do with Slytherin and Parselmouths. He misses his family, so fucking much, and now he only has tapes, pictures, and these Pensieve memories because of You-Know-Who.

“I know, sweetheart,” Lily murmurs in James’s ear, and it’s enough. For now, it has to be enough.

The next memory resolves in the inside of James’s childhood home. It’s the solarium, one of his mother’s favorite places in the entire manor aside from the back garden. Dad, Mum, Gran, and Granddad, along with a weary-looking Saul, are seated at the table. It has to be first September 1971. James has a picture tucked away of what they’d all looked like that day before departing for King’s Cross Station. Dad and Granddad have shed their jackets, but Mum and Gran are still wearing the dresses they’d chosen for the occasion. Other-Saul is wearing what looks like the same black leather jacket he was wearing in 1979, but the t-shirt beneath it is different.

“You like Pink Floyd?” Lily seems pleased by that, or maybe just nostalgic. James hasn’t heard her listen to them in a few years.

“I do, yes. I didn’t much care for their early work, but later… _Atom Heart Mother_ definitely decided me.”

For some reason, that makes Lily grin. James sort of gives up in Muggle musical despair; he doesn’t know if Saul means a particular song, or a fucked-up album name. He didn’t have time to pay attention to much of Lily’s vinyl collection lately because of the war, and now he often feels too anxious to listen to music.

“You look like you should be dead,” Lily abruptly says.

James takes another look and tries not to grimace. Lily’s right. Other-Saul isn’t just weary, but too pale, with bruises beneath his eyes and body language that speaks of being in extreme pain.

Saul nods. “That is what the Killing Curse does to you if you cannot die of it. Yes, I truly am in a great deal of pain in this memory, but more important things than that about to occur.”

The conversation starts up in a sudden rush of sound. “That won’t happen,” Granddad is saying, shaking his head. “Barty Crouch will want it, too, but he’ll be shouted down. That pack of idiots in the Wizengamot I have to work with will threaten to defund the Department of Magical Law Enforcement if Barty pushes too hard. You said two wizards. Who?”

“Oh.” Dad bites his lip. It makes him look younger, but in a few years from this moment, he’ll look so much older. “I didn’t recognize one of them. Possibly an older Half-blood or a Muggle-born, but the other…they killed Robert.”

Other-Saul suddenly looks horrified. “Robert Longbottom?”

Dad swipes at his face, brushing away tears while nodding. “Yeah. They knocked him back, and he was never the best duelist. That’s always been Harfang, and I hear Frank’s no slouch, but…” Dad sighs. “One of them knocked him back and the other hit Robert with the Killing Curse. Auror Moody’s gone to tell Augusta so that she can travel to Hogwarts, meet the train, and…and nobody wants Frank to find out that his father’s dead from anyone but family.”

James has only heard his grandmother sound that angry one other time. “That would explain your ire towards the Montagues. Who, Monty?”

“Octavius, I think. That bunch tends to all look alike, what with that nose, the lack of chin, and that scowl,” Dad answers. “We’ll find out in the paper tomorrow, or Macmillan will bow to the Wizengamot’s bigoted majority and not mention a word. Neither would surprise me.”

“Stop being so cynical. That’s my bloody job,” Other-Saul says.

“Right now it’s my turn, Saul,” Monty retorts. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Frank is only thirteen, isn’t he?” Other-Saul responds in clear regret.

“He’ll be missing his first few weeks of classes, I suspect,” Granddad says softly. “Augusta will want him at home, especially…Merlin, this is a terrible day.”

“It might still get worse,” Other-Saul notes, sounding really damned tired. “We don’t know if that will be the only attack.”

“We also have to figure out how to explain why Dad survived the Killing Curse,” Dad says. “A number of witnesses saw it nearly strike him before it was intercepted.” Dad’s eyes drop to Other-Saul’s lap. James finally notices that part of the bunched-up Invisibility Cloak is there, and Saul is clenching it with one hand. “You used that?”

“Yes. I was on the platform for most of the morning.”

“That’s how,” Lily says, but doesn’t explain what she means. James tries not to grind his teeth.

Dad is still staring at the Cloak in Other-Saul’s lap. “That’s Dad’s cloak. Except it can’t be.”

“Monty?” Granddad starts to ask, but stutters to a halt when Dad reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the dense ball of gossamer fabric, the family’s Invisibility Cloak. “Oh.”

Dad flips out the Cloak so that it reshapes itself, revealing unwrinkled perfection. “Saul, tell me that’s not the same cloak.”

Other-Saul seems resigned to the inevitable. “I can’t, because it is.”

James glances at Saul, who is watching the memory with that same intense Occlusion again. “Oh.” That’s why Saul wanted him to see those Cloaks side by side. Symmetry or something, James guesses, but it also really emphasizes the point.

Granddad reaches out and takes the Cloak from Saul, sliding the fabric between his fingers the same way James had a short while ago. He looks as bewildered as James felt when he realized they were exactly the same. “Even the pattern, the feel of it, is the same. How?”

Other-Saul holds up one hand in a request for time, fumbling around in his jacket pockets until he finds potion phials. He pulls out three, putting the gold-colored and violet-colored potions back, but keeping the green—a Restorative, James belatedly realizes. Other-Saul seems a lot more alert after drinking it. “What do you know of time travel?”

“Hooo, boy,” Lily mutters, reaching out to take James’s hand.

“Indeed,” Saul says dryly.

James decides he is going to jinx them both. Even Lily seems to understand what the hell is going on now, and he doesn’t get it!

Granddad answers Other-Saul. “I know about the Department of Mysteries and their Time-Turners, along with a great deal of what must by now be very old Muggle science-fiction stories.”

“Time-Turners have a five-hour limit.” Dad is frowning at the second Cloak held by Granddad. “Are you borrowing that from me in a few hours, then?”

“No.” Other-Saul accepts the Cloak from Granddad when he offers it back.

“Then what?” Gran is looking at Other-Saul in concern, and…well, so is everyone else, though Dad’s expression of irritation is still directed at the twin Cloaks. Other-Saul glances at them all, suddenly looking like he’s either going to start sobbing, or maybe sick up that Restorative Potion. His hands are shaking badly when he takes a sip of tea that has probably gone cold.

Other-Saul looks down at the Cloak he’s holding in his hands, and then says, “Do you have a Pensieve? I think it’s best if I show you.”

The memory blurs a little, speeding up time so minutes pass in seconds. James guesses that Granddad didn’t intend to let them linger in suspense. Then the memory returns to normal when Dad comes back to the solarium with the family Pensieve. Other-Saul looks grim as he places a memory into the bowl. “This must be old. Very few in Britain know how to make a Pensieve behave itself any longer.”

“I believe it’s been in the family for as long as that particular tapestry of Hogwarts’ four Houses,” Granddad says.

For some reason, that makes Other-Saul fumble with his wand before recovering. “Oh.” He runs his finger along the edge of the Pensieve, frowning. Then he resumes selecting memories and placing them into the bowl.

“What the hell?” James asks.

“I was trying to remember who it had belonged to,” Saul replies. “Potter Manor resides in the very same place where the keep named Griffon’s Door used to be. There are no coincidences, James.”

Lily doesn’t look shell-shocked anymore. Her emerald gaze is intense, like she’s getting ready for war. “Whose was it?”

“I think it came from Sedemai’s family. Godric’s wife. A Pensieve would have been a proper thing to gift to a magical daughter on the day she marries.”

Saul is interrupted by his own stuttering, upset voice. “There. I…I know you’ll have questions about what you see. Wait until it is done, please. I cannot—I can’t—” He looks like he’s going to fall apart, right there at the table.

Mum reaches out and grips Other-Saul’s hand. “We understand. Will you still be waiting for us when it’s done?”

Other-Saul stares at her in wide-eyed relief. “I might wander off, if my legs can manage it, but I won’t leave the manor.”

“Good enough,” Granddad declares, watching as Other-Saul shoves his copy of the Invisibility Cloak back into his jacket pocket. “What should we expect to see?”

“Unlike myself and my sister, our little brother was not born of my parents. Nizar was properly magically adopted, though he was related by blood to my father’s line already.” Other-Saul is starting to look miserable again. “This will tell you why, and how…and…and possibly far more than you ever dared to think upon.”

“I’ve thought upon it plenty,” Mum says, and dunks herself into the Pensieve without waiting for any sort of answer. Dad shrugs, wipes his eyes dry again, and joins her, followed by Gran. Then Granddad reaches out to squeeze Salazar’s shoulder before he enters the Pensieve.

The shift of one memory to the next feels exactly the same as if they were entering the Pensieve again. No; it isn’t a shift of memory. This is his grandfather’s memory of that exact moment.

James finds himself, Lily, and Saul standing in a room made of stone. There is a glass window set in the wall, a bed that seems to be built to sit on the floor instead of having any space beneath it, and—a man, standing in front of a full-length, silver mirror decorated with oxidized copper. He’s young, like the portrait of Nizar had been, and for a moment James thinks it’s the same man. Then he realizes it’s not, that this must be Saul. Nizar and Saul’s hair is almost the same color, a dark brown almost-black of shoulder-length curls, but Saul’s nose isn’t snubbed like it had been in Granddad’s memory of the portrait. This man’s eyes are exactly like his grandfather’s, a green-dominant hazel.

“Saul,” Lily gasps.

“Me,” Saul agrees with a faint smile.

James wonders, not for the first time tonight, if he’s having some kind of odd fucking nightmare.

Mum, Dad, Granddad, and Gran are also in the room, watching this man with curious expressions. It’s Granddad who notes the man’s clothing. “That is a distinctive style. That type of layering didn’t end until the 1400s or so, but it began in the 700s, or thereabouts.”

“How do you know that?” Dad asks.

Granddad huffs. “Did you not pay attention in History of Magic?”

“Dad. By then, they’d already assigned _Hogwarts: A History_ as our sodding textbook.”

“Right.” Granddad rolls his eyes. “Never mind, then. However, based on tunic length…” He trails off. “This is the Founder’s Era.”

“Where are we?” Gran asks, curious.

“Hogwarts,” Mum says. “This is definitely Hogwarts. What should we do?”

“Wait and watch, I think,” Granddad suggests. James decides that is a very good idea. He keeps his mouth shut, takes a firm grip on Lily’s hand, and waits to find out just what in the hell they’ve gotten into.

It was a good choice to make. This is a stronger Pensieve memory than James is used to experiencing, even though he hasn’t dealt with many. He quickly realizes he isn’t just watching a memory, but picking up on the thoughts that were going through Saul’s head at the time this memory occurred. It’s odd, but it’s also bloody _fascinating_.

Salazar has been twenty for two entire months, and it still doesn’t seem real. He thought, quite realistically at the time, that he would never be older than twelve. Then no older than fourteen. Eighteen.

Yet, here he still remains. He is a man with Masteries in his own talents, and a few he had yet to learn of before coming to Moravia. The school he has spent the last years helping to found is officially a place of learning as of today…and instead of teaching, Salazar is about to go out and convince the local vipers to stay out of the nearby villages.

“You would rather be doing anything else, wouldn’t you, Sal?” Orellana teases from behind him.

Salazar finishes pinning his cloak in place and turns to face his wife. James thinks she looks paler than Lily, with brown eyes and thick black hair that hangs in loose waves down to her waist. Her gown helps to set the time period even more than the form-fitting trousers (hose, maybe?), knee-length tunic, and the cloak over Saul’s shoulder does.

“The local vipers are stubborn.” Salazar tries not to frown. His irritation is certainly not for her. “But I did agree to do so, if only so the villagers would tolerate us.”

“It is the last spring of the years meant to be adhered to in that particular agreement,” Orellana reminds him, walking forward to straighten the silver clasp so that the stones of his magical masteries hang properly. Her chemise is black; her gown today is woven from shades of brown and bronze silk thread that emphasize her pale skin, a perfect complement to the red and gold highlights in her eyes. “If they forget to negotiate a new agreement, and we neglect to mention it…”

“Devious.” Salazar plants a kiss on her forehead, and a much more enthusiastic one upon her lips. “I will be back before supper. I would hope to be back by dinner, but the locals love to talk, and always pretend not to realize it when they have started to use words I do not understand.”

Orellana gives him a gentle shove. “Go on, then, or you really will have waited too long to have a chance at returning before dusk!”

Downstairs, Salazar crosses paths with Godric, who takes one look at his face and knows exactly what Salazar is up to. “Adders?”

Salazar glances back at him. “I thought you said that was the term for all serpents in your fucking English?”

Godric grins at him. “Vipers, then. You won’t be missing anything, you know. I expect today is to be a complete disaster for everyone but Rowena.”

“That is because she is the only one who knows how to take the six of us and the sixteen of them, and somehow craft a timetable that isn’t nonsense,” Salazar replies. “I still find that baffling. Did we not all train for the same sort of thing?”

“Four differing kingdoms, four differing ways of managing lands, keep, and title,” Godric says, shrugging. “We’ll all figure out how it’s best done, eventually.”

Salazar passes by Helga at the large doors that guard the Entrance Hall. “Have a fine day speaking to serpents, little brother.”

“I am going to spend the entire day whinging about it as often as possible.”

Helga turns around and grins at him, revealing her warm, gold-flecked blue eyes and teasing smirk. “I know!”

James watches the colors blur, another transition of time that is gentler than the one Granddad had managed for the memories that were just his. That one would’ve been done by Saul.

“Why are colors weird?” Lily asks before the new memory can settle.

“I have a rare ability to see more colors than the average human. If I am concentrating hard to put the full strength of a memory into a Pensieve, it translates for the one viewing the memory. If I am not attempting to do so, the colors you see would appear normal to you.” Saul hesitates. “Most do not understand how to make a Pensieve memory an immersive experience any longer, but that is probably for the best.”

They’re now near a village that looks…well…medieval. Standing outdoors also makes it far more obvious that the stones, the grass, the leaves on the trees, all look _odd_. James can still see the leaves of an overhead tree just fine, but now there are strong variations in the green when he normally just sees a solid block of one color. He usually can’t see yellow-blue veining in those leaves, either. Tree bark is suddenly more than tones of grey. Grass has colorful life to it. The dull yellow of a thatched roof is mixed with pale browns, faint orange, and gold. The clouds aren’t just swirls of fluffy white; the blue of the sky is intense. “Merlin, this is amazing.”

“It’s like standing in a Van Gogh painting,” Lily says. “Once that’s in focus, I mean.”

“I sometimes wonder if he saw the world this way, too, though now if I encounter anyone who speaks of color this way, they’re most often women. None of my children or grandchildren inherited it, nor Nizar’s. My sister’s daughter, though—she did, and after her, every daughter of her line for every generation until there were no more.” Saul nods in the direction of the village. “This is Castleview. You know it now as Hogsmeade. This is where I met my brother for the first time.”

James finds younger Saul easily enough. Under the sun, his clothes aren’t solidly black anymore. There is still black to see, but it’s accompanied by deep undertones of green and violet. It isn’t like colors mutated so much as someone took off a pair of blinders James never knew existed. “I didn’t realize Hogsmeade was that old.”

“The village sort of cropped up and grew as it became more obvious that the school would become reality,” Saul tells them. It still seems odd to James, starting off with meeting Saul’s brother instead of maybe Saul’s first meeting with the bloody _Founders_. “Remember that a translation spell is being used, else no one would understand what is being said.”

“Not modern English,” Lily murmurs. “Old English.”

“Among many other languages.”

James finds where his family is standing in this memory, because if he doesn’t focus on that, instead, his brain might explode. They look just as fascinated, just as bewildered, as he feels. Then the depth of the memory settles into place again.

Salazar glares up at the sun before he resumes hissing at the stubborn prick of a viper he encountered as he tried to leave the village. “ _I mean it. No. You aren’t even meant to be this far north on this isle!_ ”

“ _It is not my fault it warmed up enough for us to explore farther north than we ever could before_ ,” the viper hisses back, sulking.

James’s sudden understanding of a talking bloody snake nearly makes him fling himself from the Pensieve.

“ _What do you mean?_ ” Salazar asks.

“ _If it was still colder in these lands every year, we would not be in the north at all!_ ” the viper exclaims.

Salazar’s eyes widen. “ _It is meant to be colder than this? Then I am fucking grateful to have arrived during a warmer time!_ ” It’s mid-afternoon, the sun already well on its way to the west, and he has felt no reason at all to remove his heavier cloak. He much prefers to be warm. “ _Very well, then. But remember to hold to the agreement we have made. The villages are not meant for your kind. Otherwise, slither off wherever you like. Oh, and mind your manners!_ ” he yells after the departing snake.

Salazar escapes before another of the village wives can capture his arm and fill his ear with words. He doesn’t mind words of themselves, but learning the local tongues has been much like yanking out his own teeth.

He slows his steps as he realizes he isn’t alone on the southern path. There is a boy standing there, staring down at something in the grass. No, not a boy, but a young man, one with the deep bruises of sleepless nights underneath his eyes. His hair is black and wild, but it doesn’t appear ill-groomed. His skin is pale with hints of bronze that wants to be, visible to Salazar even if others would remain unaware. The boy is too thin for a youth of his size, dressed in strange clothing. The brown tunic has a hood, but it’s far too short, as if he outgrew its length and had nothing to replace it with. His trousers are made like the Norsemen prefer (which Salazar decided was a grand idea and began copying immediately) but the trousers cling in a way that is almost as indecent as wearing hose and pants with a too-short tunic. There is some sort of white shirt beneath the brown tunic, but it is also too short. He has no belt to speak of, but his boots are made from black-dyed leather. Those are decent enough, but there is unfamiliar height to the bottom of those boots instead of a flat sole.

The lenses he wears are the strangest, the glass utterly pristine in a way that even magicians struggle to achieve—and never have they managed glass lenses that are so thin and fine. What mars that perfection is the frame holding the lenses over the boy’s eyes; that has been broken and repaired with strips of some odd material. There are older fracture lines also, which were repaired by magic. Salazar wonders at the dichotomy.

What truly captures Salazar’s attention, aside from the boy’s obvious need for an adult to safeguard him _immediately_ , is his voice. The boy is a Parselmouth, and he’s telling off a viper. Rudely and effectively, but the language is unmistakable.

“ _Terrible human boy!_ ” the viper yells as it glides away, sulking. “ _Insulting my hunting prowess!_ ”

“ _You were trying to hunt for chicken eggs!_ ” the boy yells back, grinning when the viper swears at him in creative fashion.

“ _Oh, dear gods._ ”

Salazar doesn’t even realize it was himself who voiced the words until the boy whirls toward him, wide-eyed and ready for a fight before he realizes he faces only another magician, not…not whatever danger he seemed to expect. The boy’s features are a smaller, famine-narrowed and ghostly reflection of what Salazar gazes upon in his own mirror. His eyes are not merely green with mixed variations of color. They are pure emerald, the exact same shade as Salazar’s family magic. The only thing marring his features is a strangely shaped scar that rests just above his right eyebrow: three sharp, connected lines, like an ancient Latin _s_.

His heart beats faster in surprise and concern. That scar is cursed; he can feel it even from so many paces distant.

This boy cannot be a member of his family. He knows the faces of all of his cousins, but the resemblance is unmistakable. The feel of his magic is unmistakable!

If this boy is somehow a member of his father’s family, then how did he come to be here? Why is he alone? Why is he starved and fearful?

Who will Salazar need to kill to avenge this boy’s ill treatment?

The first word the boy speaks is foreign to Salazar’s ears. James understands it, though. Anyone speaking modern English would.

“Hello?” the boy ventures, his accent modern RP that sounds like it took a shortcut through Surrey. Then he tries again in what must be Parseltongue. “ _Hello?_ ”

Salazar grins in relief. “ _I wasn’t mistaken! You’re a Parselmouth!_ ” he exclaims.

“ _Yeah._ ” The boy looks as if he would prefer not to admit it. “ _I’m not used to people being so happy about it._ ”

“ _Why not? It’s an excellent magical gift!_ ” Salazar was already certain that something was amiss, but this fear of mere language is truly bewildering. Perhaps he needs a reason to think of its good qualities? “ _It’s useful, and it makes people happy when I can visit their homes and tell all the new snakes in the area to stay out of the village. You even found one that I missed!_ ”

“ _I guess I did._ ”

Salazar has to translate _guess_. He decides it must be a substitution for _suppose_. Now the boy’s words make sense.

The boy glances back at the village, but not as if he belongs there, or as if it is familiar. He is seeking—

Helga will wish to slay someone. The boy is not in danger, not surrounded, and yet he is already seeking escape routes.

“ _No one thinks you’re evil because you’re a Parselmouth?_ ”

Salazar nearly gapes at him. “ _No._ ” Not even the priests, who speak more often of late on the evils of witchcraft, have found reason to fear a language. “ _Why would they?_ ”

The boy glances away again, in the opposite direction. “ _I—where I’m from. They do. I don’t speak it unless I don’t think anyone else is around._ ”

“ _Then I’m very glad I found you. I was not born on this isle, either. Gods wept and thank them all, someone else who can finally understand what I’m saying all the time!_ ”

“ _Are you a wizard?_ ” the boy asks him.

Wizard? Salazar doesn’t know that word, but he can discern its meaning well enough.

“ _Do you mean a magician? Of course I am. I’ve never met a non-magical being who can speak Parseltongue. It’s a family trait—and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were family. We look very much alike._ ”

The boy seems to find that unbelievable. “ _We do?_ ”

“ _I suppose your family didn’t have a mirror, though that doesn’t excuse one’s inability to gaze into a smooth body of water._ ” Salazar peers at him. “ _Unless those magnifying lenses on your face aren’t very good?_ ”

“ _They’re good enough._ ” The boy blushes in what appears to be shame. Why would he feel shame? Salazar’s curiosity is not only roused, it’s in a high state of alarm.

Then the boy asks, “ _I—can you help me?_ ”

“ _Help you?_ ” This, Salazar can work with. “ _Probably. What can you then do for me?_ ” he asks, unthinkingly referring to the ways of his Basque family. It’s the boy’s face, the feeling of his magic.

Too late, Salazar realizes he has erred. “ _Never mind,_ ” the boy snaps, his eyes burning in glassy rage that makes their emerald color seem to glow. “ _I’ll just remain lost. There are a lot of people who’d be happy to know that._ ” Then he turns and stalks off, his wild black hair stirred by a faint breeze.

Salazar stares at the boy’s retreating back, baffled. What just—what happened? What was that?

“Stop it, stop it, stop it…” James sucks in a breath and realizes he’s the one gasping that out, over and over. Saul, alarmed, uses that same gesture from earlier to freeze the Pensieve memory.

“Thanks.” James leans over, hands on his knees, and tries to figure out if he’s going to sick up again.

Lily sounds like she’s crying. “Please tell me that isn’t who I think it is.”

Saul was right. This is worse than finding out about Peter. James feels like someone just ripped his heart out of his chest.

When James glances up, it’s to find that Saul looks almost as upset as James feels. “You wonder why I would have a Cloak that is not merely similar, but exactly yours?” Saul visibly swallows. “Aside from a small pile of gold in a vault held in trust for his schooling, that Invisibility Cloak was my brother’s only inheritance from his family. They died when he was just over a year old, murdered by You-Know-Who on Hallowe’en in 1981. That is the only history he knew, aside from one other truth. When You-Know-Who attempted to perform foul magic against the child he had declared his enemy, the spell backfired. It destroyed You-Know-Who’s physical form. My brother lived, though he bore a scar from that night, a mark of something terrible.”

“No,” Lily moans through the hand clamped over her mouth. “Not my baby.”

The scar on that boy’s forehead that looks like a lightning bolt. That’s the scar You-Know-Who is going to give James’s son. Three months from now.

“ _And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal,_ ” James quotes, and then sits down in the dirt with a heavy thump.

“I hate that fucking prophecy.” Saul’s eyes are taking in the tall grass. It’s static, frozen in time and memory instead of waving in the breeze that ceased when the memory halted. “We didn’t know about it. No one told him. We don’t even know the whole of it. What Severus Snape knew is only the first half. You’ve just spoken a line of it that I didn’t know before.”

“How do you know Snape only heard the first half?” James whispers. “Only Albus and Aberforth—”

“Because I know how Cassandra’s Curse works. It’s an incomplete prophecy, lacking in rhyme and repetition.”

Lily wipes her face with both hands, her gaze locked on the slight figure that was stilled in the act of stalking away from them. “You said that someone you cared for asked you to look after his family.”

James climbs to his feet. “But my parents, my grandparents—Aunt Dorea, Uncle Charles! What about them?”

Saul bows his head, stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets. “I was born on twenty-eighth December in the year 969. I am one thousand eleven years old. Through those many years, I’ve learned that time lived is time that will continue to be as it was—that there are events which cannot be changed. When I met my brother, his future aligned itself to the past, and his past became my future. He asked me to try to save those I could during You-Know-Who’s first war, but many centuries ago, I thought: why should that be where I begin? There was someone in France whose life was in danger, someone who history had recorded as deceased by specific means, but my attempt to save them did not work. In fact, I still believe I might have helped to create the very circumstances that led to their historically recorded death. The problem is rather obvious in retrospect.”

“You were trying to—” Lily has to sniff and try again. “You were trying to change history. _Known_ history.”

Saul nods without lifting his head. “This last decade, however, bearing that in mind, I tried something different. Thus, thirteen members of the Underground are believed by Wizarding Britain, and thus by history, to be deceased. One was killed several years after his falsified death, but the history of his passing remains unchanged. However, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes history is set in ways even I don’t know of. Sometimes magic herself will kick me like a bloody mule in the chest, a reminder not to stick my nose where it is not wanted.”

James thinks he can breathe and speak and function now without vomiting up his own socks. “For Uncle Charles and Aunt Dorea—there was no warning.”

“There was, but…” Saul sighs, rough and ragged. “It was not a single warning we felt that night. You went to the manor because you didn’t understand what was happening. I went there because it was the first and strongest call I heard, and it is the reason you survived.”

“Because—” James had forgotten that he nearly died that night. Losing Aunt Dorea and Uncle Charles made everything else seem dim and unimportant, but Saul is right. “If you hadn’t turned up at the manor and shoved me into the dirt, I would have died that night when a Killing Curse struck me in the back. And then on Hallowe’en, my family wouldn’t _let_ you save them. It wasn’t a lack of trying. The blood ward was in the way. They made that ward to save me, but it meant even if you wanted to, you couldn’t…”

“Save them?” Saul lifts his head, revealing his eyes are red-rimmed again from weeping. “I tried to do so, anyway. I was warned by magic herself to stay away, but I was—they were my family and I loved them, and I could not, would not stay away.”

Lily looks at James. For the first time since their wedding day, James has no idea what’s going through her head. “But you think you can save us,” she says. “That we won’t die on Hallowe’en.”

Saul nods. “I’ve not yet been kicked for trying it. If it could not be done, we would not even be speaking this way now. Circumstances would have arranged themselves to prevent it. However, if the two of you are willing to participate in the plan that we’ve conceived, harsh though it is, I do not merely _think_ you can be saved. I’m certain you can.”

James thinks back to what’s been said tonight, and by who, as he gets to his feet and dusts off his hands. “On that tape, Dad told us we’d be walking a careful, frightening path.”

Saul manages to shrug with his expression instead of his shoulders. “Monty might’ve been putting it lightly.”

“And Granddad said that he _knows_ You-Know-Who doesn’t win. Absolute certainty. He believes Harry’s going to do what he’s been prophesized to do,” James continues.

“As far as the first half of that prophecy goes? Yes, he will,” Saul says, “and I’m not being overconfident. I know what my brother is capable of. Your grandfather also said I was going to make certain all of you survive a madman’s plan, but my plan is just as mad.”

Okay, maybe now James understands the look in Lily’s eyes. That is a daunting level of determination, but she was always the stubborn one, the one who pushed hard even after James was willing to back off.

“If that’s true, then why this? Why is Harry _here?_ ” Lily asks, thrusting her hand in that boy’s direction.

That boy. His son. Lily’s green eyes, James’s terrible hair, and the sick-pale face of someone who’s seen far too many sleepless nights. Someone defensive and snappish, afraid and alone. That’s what Harry is going to look like in fifteen years.

James’s stomach clenches. He has to know the answer to Lily’s question, and he’s terrified of what he’ll find out.

“We can leave this Pensieve, and I can attempt to answer your questions as best I can, or…” Saul tilts his head at the path. “You can stay, and watch, and discover such for yourself.”

James swallows down the burn at the back of his throat and reaches for Lily. She reaches back, gripping his hand as their finger entwine.

Lily takes a breath and meets his eyes. “Staying?”

“Yeah.” James tries to smile. “I’m scared shitless, Lil.”

Lily nods, her lip is trembling. “So am I.”


	35. A Painted Pensieve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _At the moment, he knows nothing of that sort of extended, unchanging life beyond what a Horcrux grants, and neither of them would create such a thing. Not even for this._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnd back to the regularly scheduled update and/or an extra gift, considering the date. Flailed at happily by @norcumii! (Okay, maybe not HAPPILY...)
> 
> Please note that Salazar did say at the beginning that there is a translation spell in effect, hence the modern terminology.

The Pensieve memories that linger in James’s thoughts longer than any of the others begins in March of 1017. It sticks around, taunting him, because it hurts the most. Not because of its blatant demonstration of what Salazar means when he says that time is a circle, but because it shows James exactly what it will cost his son for them to go through with this mad fucking plan to fake their deaths—and they have to. Fuck history, and fuck fate. James will fight for his son even after his son won’t and can’t know that it’s still happening.

Salazar wanders down the kitchen stairs far too early, though it might be more accurate to say he stumbles down them. “Gods, why,” he whinges, dropping into an empty space on the bench that happens to place him across the table from Nizar.

“That’s what I was wanting to know. What are you doing up so early? You hate mornings.” Nizar picks up a cup of tea and drinks it instead of passing it along. Vile prick.

“My legs decided on their own that I needed to be awake and moving. I didn’t give in to their demands, so now they ache.” Salazar plants his elbows on the table so he can rest his head in his hands. “No, I haven’t been at the pain potions yet. I’m still trying to figure out _why_ they hurt.”

“I’ve no idea. That sounds more like something that would drive me out of bed rather than you.”

“Marion?” Salazar asks, because he awoke to empty quarters. Marion hates mornings as much as he does, so to find her already gone from their room is a rarity.

“Betisa decided she preferred an early morning today, as well. She was up before any of us, and likely picked up a mild illness from the village, given how cranky she was about it. Marion dosed her and then went outside to take advantage of the warm morning, and to help distract Betisa from thinking on how much she hates feeling ill.” Nizar finally takes pity on Salazar and brews a new mug of tea, letting it steep longer to extract more of the leaf’s astringent qualities. “We should go East this summer. We’re running low on tea. Chá. Does it really matter, I wonder, if we use the current word, or my old word?”

“I don’t yet care. Give me the tea and then I’ll decide.”

After he drinks most of the tea, Salazar perks up enough to look around the kitchen. His knees still ache, like he landed hard on them and forgot to heal the damage afterwards, but he isn’t injured. He knows he has used his joints harshly, but he’s only forty-seven years of age. There is no reason for his body to choose now to complain.

Oh, he is such an arse. Godric has been dealing with pains in his joints for nearly a decade now, and Salazar is whinging about aching knees. If anything, that prompts him to start contemplating ways to improve the potions that reduce the swelling in joints. He should experiment with trying that himself before resorting directly to a pain potion, as that would certainly narrow down the list of culprits.

Or he could simply ask Helga.

Salazar glances down the table to find Helga sitting at the end of the bench. She’s resting her head in one hand and leaning a bit sideways.

No, he will not be asking Helga. She looks to be having a rougher morning than he is, and that means he has yet more potions to brew. He will not let a damned malignant _growth_ be her undoing. Not if it’s within his power to make it otherwise.

The tables feel so empty of a morning. The teachers of Hogewáþ still come down into the kitchen for meals, joined by their families, but they’ve so many students now that they eat in the Receiving Hall. Salazar vaguely recalls Nizar mentioning such a use for it, years ago, but the necessity became obvious without his brother needing to speak of it again.

“Oi, both of you!” Nizar eyes Drystan and Paynel, who must have been up to mischief to have earned that particular look. “None of that. You know better.”

Paynel looks as if he might sulk, but Drystan has always been the one to catch on when he or his brother have pushed too far. “Sorry, Grandfather.”

“Right, then. Classes. Off with you,” Nizar tells them, tilting his head in the direction of the stairs. Drystan darts off. Paynel shuffles a bit at first, before excitement makes him forget the sting of being called on his bad behavior.

“It’s been years, and it is still very odd to hear them call me that.” Nizar turns around to face Salazar just as the sun breaks through the blasted constant clouds that have befouled summer. Salazar blinks a bit at the harsh light, glad he was already awake before the sun attempted to blind him from behind.

When his eyes adjust, he finds Nizar staring at him, lips parted, eyes wide, and his skin ashen. “Nizar?” He gets no response. “Little brother, what is it?”

Nizar blinks twice and then all but flies off the bench backwards. “Sorry, need to do something upstairs, seeyoulater—” and then commits to Apparition before the sentence is completed.

“What was that about?” Helga asks.

Salazar turns to look at her. “I have no idea. I suppose I had best find out, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that expression on his face before.” His little brother is a sarding time traveler, Briton’s war mage, and Hogewáþ’s Protector, and still Salazar cannot recall Nizar ever looking such a way before now.

“I can go with you,” Helga offers.

“Absolutely not,” he retorts in Norse after observing none nearby who speak the language. “You are staying seated until you’ve found strength enough to climb the stairs again.” He frowns when Helga glares at him. “I noticed, Helga. I know you are not near as well as you are pretending to be. If it is truly an emergency, I will tell you.”

Helga still looks angered, but she nods. “If he is to be easily found.”

“I will have no trouble,” Salazar replies. That is the certainty of Divination; Nizar has not gone far.

Salazar Apparates directly to the seventh storey of the castle, but not right into Nizar’s quarters. It has never been a good idea to make his brother feel cornered, not if you wish to convince him to speak of something troubling him. He instead takes the slow way, walking through the empty room used for teaching Defence before knocking on Nizar’s door.

He doesn’t expect to get an answer, and receives none, but is glad to discover he has not been locked out. The latch lifts, allowing him to open the door.

Nizar is kneeling on the rug in his sitting room, bent over, his hands shoved through his hair. What disturbs Salazar more than the panic of his posture, more than the tears, and more than the faint hissing whispers of _No, please, no,_ is Nizar’s hair. It is still the right color, sun-touched dark brown, but it is alive with magic, almost as wild as it had been the day they first met.

Salazar kneels down in front of his brother. “Nizar.”

Nizar sucks in a breath. “I’m—” Then he chokes on whatever he meant to say, his fingers tightening their grip on his hair.

“No, no little brother,” Salazar soothes him, running a single, gentle hand down his brother’s quivering back while resting his palm on Nizar’s hands. “Do not do this to yourself.”

“ _It’s too much_ ,” Nizar hisses. “ _I have not been fine, yet I’ve managed it, but this—it’s too much, Sal. I can’t do this._ ”

That nearly brings Salazar to tears, as well. He has known since Brice’s death that his little brother has not been well, that he has lost weight, that his smiles have been too infrequent. Elfric dying as he did, disappearing from their lives and giving them no body to grieve over, only made things worse. Salazar truly believes that only Betisa’s birth and Kanza’s companionship granted Nizar the means to struggle his way through the rest of 1,015.

Salazar slowly convinces Nizar to stop trying to yank out his own hair, waiting until Nizar finds it easier to breathe. “I have no idea what you’re speaking of, little brother. But I hope you will tell me. Let me help. Please.”

For some reason, that makes Nizar utter a wild peal of laughter. “You do, though! You do help me. Oh, _gods._ ”

Now Salazar is not only worried, he is confounded. “Nizar, please. I have no idea—I’m worried you are having the sort of breakdown that leaves others thoughtless and spiritless.”

“ _No, I already had one of those in 1,012._ ” Nizar removes his hands from his hair and then pushes himself upright. He looks distressed beyond belief, his features beleaguered by broken sobbing.

“Please. Look at me,” Salazar begs. He does not need Divination to know that something has gone terribly wrong.

Nizar grips the fabric of his trousers with both hands and then looks at Salazar. His gaze is still too wide and wild, the green in his eyes dominant over every other color. Not quite the shine of his magic, but oh so very close. His brother swallows, and then, sounding like he is standing watch over an open grave, asks, “Will you fetch my Pensieve, Sal? There is something I need to show you.”

Salazar frowns, but nods. “All right.” He gets up, ignoring his irritable, whinging knees, and goes into Nizar’s storage room. It is still odd to be in this space and have there be no brewing room, to find the sitting area so much smaller than it had once been.

No, it isn’t merely odd. It’s distressing, a reflection of Nizar’s state of mind.

Salazar returns to the sitting room with the redstone Pensieve cradled in his arms. Nizar has pulled himself up to sit at his own table, but there is an intense frown of concentration on his face. Whatever it is he wants Salazar to view, he is doing his best to collect the whole of it. When Salazar places the Pensieve onto the table in front of his brother, Nizar opens his eyes and then literally blows the misty vapor of memory into the bowl.

“You could have used your wand,” Salazar observes. Never has a Pensieve memory looked so ominous.

“I thought I might get it wrong if I did,” Nizar murmurs.

“What is this?” Salazar prompts when Nizar does nothing further. “I would prefer some sort of explanation for what we’re about to witness. This is terrifying the life out of me.”

“I’m currently terrified, as well, so that is appropriate enough.” Nizar rests his shaking hands on the table and uses it to lever himself to his feet. “This is—this is midnight. Thirty-first July, 1,995.”

Salazar nearly jerks back from the table. “You’ve never shown me that.” His brother has spoken of that moment, of the unidentified magician who sent him from 1,995 to 990, but never has he shared the memory. Not by Pensieve, not by Mind Magic.

“I would not have shown it to you, even if you had asked.” Nizar closes his eyes. “Even knowing as I do now that it was not my fault, I’m ashamed of the circumstances I was found in, Sal. Now even more so than before.”

“Then I will again say: it was not your fault, and I will not judge you for it.”

Nizar opens his eyes and looks at Salazar. “Maybe you won’t,” he says, and Salazar has the strangest feeling that their words are not aligning as they should—that they are speaking of the same thing, and yet they are also speaking of something entirely different. “Come with me.”

“You still have not warned me of what I am about to see,” Salazar reminds him.

“There is no warning I can grant you that is preparation for this,” Nizar replies, and holds out his hand. Salazar grimaces, accepts Nizar’s hand, and then joins him for the plunge into the Pensieve.

Salazar finds himself standing in a room that has oddly precise squared walls, floor, and ceiling. It all must be built of smooth lime plaster, not stone, but the plaster is barren. The single window is a precise rectangle built from many smaller rectangles. The glass is pristine in some places but blurs the view of the night sky in others, as if it was imperfectly cleaned. The floor is made of a good solid wood, but even though the planks are expertly cut, Salazar knows that there is something wrong about them. They feel…incomplete.

The few furnishings he sees are poor: a strange standing wooden item has inner shelves full of hideous clothing, but the doors for these shelves are broken. An occupied cage is perched atop it.

Hedwig. His brother’s lost owl is asleep in that cage, her face buried beneath her own wing.

All of his surroundings have a palpable aura of despair, making this room deplorable. It is no place for anyone to rest, and yet, there is his little brother, so very young, laying on a poor excuse for a bed. Salazar supposes that must be this time’s version of a mattress, but its condition explains why Nizar voiced no complaints about his own bed the entirety of their first year together.

A boy still called Harry James Potter is staring up at a strange bracelet wrapped around his left arm. A gentle green glow from the bracelet bathes his face in green light. It’s the same gentle glow to be found by anyone in the underground sitting room for the apprentices of Deslizarse, soothed by the illuminated depths of the Black Lake.

“This is your sleeping chamber.” Salazar has to hear his little brother say it.

“It was, yes.” Nizar tilts his head at the child waiting in that sloped bed. He has only a dingy cushion and a torn quilt for bedding. “I’d forgotten about that watch. I mean, that bracelet you’re seeing, the one that glows? It’s a time-keeping device.”

“Easy to carry, and easy to view. I want one,” Salazar says. Beside him, Nizar makes another strangled sound, laughter that is also anguish.

The time-keeping device chirps several times, and its tone is very strange. “Midnight,” Nizar announces. His younger self silences the sound by pressing something on the time-keeping device, rather drearily wishing himself a happy birthday.

“This is terrible. This is worse than I thought it would be.”

Salazar stiffens at those words. He knows that voice.

In the corner of this unlit room stands a man of his height. His hair is very short, threaded with silvered from temple to crown, though no silver mars that deep dark brown atop his head. He has a beard that also bears silver threads, though it is trimmed very close to his face, shorter than Salazar has ever preferred. Those clothes are entirely unfamiliar, though the trousers—those are the same sort of cotton trousers his little brother had been wearing in 990. His boots appear to be black, but are strangely laced. His shirt is like Hari’s had once been, far too short. He wears a parted black leather garment over it, one that resembles a too-short gambeson, yet is very much not that at all.

“Who are you?” Salazar approves of his little brother’s instinctive defence even as he quails at what is occurring. Hari is pointing his wand at the sudden guest in his sleeping chamber, his voice and his hand both steady. It was his eyes that always gave him away in those early days; they are too wide, filled with anger and grief in equal measure.

“I’m a friend—well, let’s leave it at ‘ally.’ That probably seems more reasonable at the moment. Are you going to point your wand at me all night?”

“If I have to. It’s not like I have old men showing up in my bedroom all that often,” Hari retorts.

“I—old—you called me—” They both watch that shadowy, very familiar figure put his hand over his face. Nizar is now bearing a faint, sad smile. Salazar doesn’t claim to be vain, and he doesn’t strut about, but vain he really is. “That was not very nice.”

“You showed up in my bedroom at midnight, in the dark, without knocking, haven’t introduced yourself, and _I’m_ the one who’s rude?” Hari asks in obvious disbelief. “Seriously?”

“I’d forgotten I said that.” Nizar seems bemused. “I had quite the mouth on me, didn’t I?”

“You always have.” Salazar swallows. “Nizar—”

“Just watch,” Nizar says, but he reaches out to grip Salazar’s hand.

“Old!” the shadowy figure repeats in obvious dismay. “Fine, then. I apologize for the late intrusion, not to mention the secretive part, but I didn’t want to wake your interesting relatives. I’d probably stab them, and then there are police and M.L.E. investigations, and it’s just a great big pain in the arse.”

“What are police and M.L.E.?” Salazar asks. He knows Nizar must have made certain this memory would translate into a language he understands. He never could make sense of his little brother’s modern English, but those terms are beyond him.

“They’re groups who try to prove that others performed vile acts,” Nizar explains just as Hari says, “Okay, that’s kind of a fair point. What do you want?”

“Might I turn on the light? It will probably make things seem much less clandestine—and don’t worry about sound carrying. I already cast a spell that will ensure that no one else will hear anything.” There is concern in the other’s voice, though it is obvious that Hari doesn’t notice. He is too wary of a threat to hear any hint of kindness.

“Which means you could murder me, and they’d never know.”

That earns Hari a bit of warm humor. “Usually the point to murdering people is that they don’t know about it beforehand. Light?”

Hari is not steady on his feet when he stands up. Salazar suddenly recalls how thin his brother had been when they met, how sarding _starved_ , and is torn between fury and heartbreak. “Hold on. Now I can—”

It isn’t swift movement that saves Hari from landing hard on this imperfect wooden floor, but silent Apparition. “Relax. I’ll let you go the moment I’m certain you’re not going to brain yourself on the floor.”

How often has he soothed Nizar with words, steady and quiet reassurance when nothing else proved useful?

“I’m fine.” How often has Nizar been so utterly bullheaded stubborn?

“You aren’t,” the other says, and turns on a light overhead by the use of an odd switch on the wall framed in white. Salazar’s grip on Nizar’s hand must be paining his brother, but Nizar says not a word.

Salazar may not want this to be, but he isn’t a fool. He understands now why the light in the kitchen had created such an extreme response in Nizar. In that moment, Salazar must have looked exactly the same as this older version of himself.

He is not much older than he is now, but isn’t certain of the difference. Salazar is of a long-lived line. The lines on that face would suit a man of fifty-odd years, but also a man of seventy.

In this particular instance? Yes; a _very_ long-lived line.

“Oh, gods,” Salazar whispers. “What have I done?”

“You saved my life,” is Nizar’s reply.

Hari and Salazar’s _much_ older self stare at each other for nearly two minutes before Hari finds his voice. “Who are you?”

“I can’t tell you that, and not because I don’t want to.” His accent is odd and rich, an echo of centuries behind it that causes Salazar to shiver. He seems to have abandoned any appearance of luxury, and yet…perhaps he has not? The means of dress in his little brother’s original time is very different from what he is accustomed to now.

“I’m speaking your modern English perfectly, aren’t I?”

Nizar glances at him from the corner of his eye. “Yes, you are.”

“Then what _can_ you tell me?” Hari asks in blunt frustration.

“Nizar, I do not know if I can watch this,” Salazar whispers, just as his much older self answers Hari’s question.

“I’m here to save you from what’s to come. It’s just going to be a rather complicated method of saving.”

Hari is suspicious, but his eyes are marked by intense yearning that finishes the job of breaking Salazar’s fucking heart. “What’s to come?”

His elder self looks so pained, so grieved. “Voldemort. Again, and again, and again, until someone dies. I’d rather it not be you, as would quite a number of other people.”

“A number of—that’s rich,” Hari says in immediate, scornful distrust. “I read the _Prophet_ , you know.”

“A way of spreading news,” Nizar says before Salazar can ask. “Though in that case, the news depended on who gave them the most money.”

“You were so bitter, little brother,” Salazar says in a choked voice. “Gods, the difference between this moment and when we crossed paths so many years ago—” He gasps, and it is pain. “ _The path that I placed you on—_ ”

“The path I was meant to walk, idiot,” Nizar responds. “Hush.”

“Okay. Let’s say I believe you. What does this ‘saving’ of yours involve?” Hari asks.

“I can tell you that you will be a hell of a lot safer than if you were to remain here. I can tell you that you will receive useful magical training for your survival, not the guesswork you’ve been expected to perform up until this point.”

“Now who sounds bitter, brother?” Nizar asks, and Salazar grants him a nod. That is not merely bitterness, but a tired anger.

Hari is still suspicious. “What’s the catch?”

“The catch is that it could take a while.”

Salazar presses his fist against his mouth, tears finally breaking free. His other self does not want to be standing in this room, and he does not want to be doing what must be done, but he must, because it _has_ been done.

“A while,” Hari repeats in a skeptical tone. “So people could die while I’m off doing whatever mysterious thing you’re talking about.”

“If _you_ die, a lot of other people will also then die at Voldemort’s hand. At this point, you’re arguing semantics. No matter which option you choose, death might be lying in wait.”

“Even you think I’m supposed to kill Voldemort,” Nizar says thoughtfully. “I wonder what happened to make you believe that.”

“Nizar—I do not think I can watch more of this,” Salazar rasps.

Nizar squeezes his hand. “Yes, you can. I think maybe you have to.”

“You don’t work for Dumbledore,” Hari says. Salazar hisses at the mention of that damned man’s hated name.

“No. He’s not a bad sort, but we have some differences of opinion.”

Salazar glares at his older self. That was an utter lie. A practiced one, but still a falsehood. Differences of opinion, his entire arse.

“Like?”

When the elder Salazar scowls, that is when the resemblance between them is the most acute. “Your residing in this fucking house, for starters. It was meant to be temporary, not permanent.” That is true, yet also false, and Salazar can’t quite determine which part is which.

The hope in Hari’s eyes makes each piece of Salazar’s shattered heart burn. “You knew my parents.”

“I did.” Salazar’s elder self looks away, crossing his arms. He knows himself; that is avoidance and discomfort, but not a falsehood. “They wouldn’t have wanted this.”

“Oh, really? What would they want, then?” Hari asks snidely.

“They wouldn’t want their child to be forced to fight in a war he’s not prepared for.”

Hari looks as if someone has stabbed him in the heart. “You’re the first person I can think of who’s ever said anything like that to me.”

“Nizar. Please,” Salazar requests, his voice cracking. “I swear to you that I do not need to see what remains. Please.”

“Very well.” Nizar looks upward and uses the grip of his magic to pull them from the Pensieve before the memory finishes unfurling itself.

The moment they’re free of the Pensieve, Salazar collapses onto the floor, arms wrapped around his chest. “I want to—I wish to say that cannot be. But we both know better.”

Nizar wipes his face with his sleeve and then drops down on the floor next to Salazar. “Yes. We do.”

“1,995.” Salazar attempts to dry his eyes and fails, given that he’s still weeping. “I would have to be—Nizar, I would be one thousand twenty-five years old.”

“Congratulations; you live to be older than Myrddin?” Nizar offers weakly.

“No one wants to live to be older than Myrddin!” Salazar shouts back.

“I know,” Nizar whispers. “I just—I have to go back. I have to, and I don’t want—”

Salazar sits up and stares at him in horror. “What makes you think such? There is no reason to believe that necessary!”

“You— _that_ you—believes I’m meant to kill Voldemort. Not _once_ did you refute it, Sal!” Nizar presses his hand over his mouth. He looks as if he is on the verge of being ill, and tears are beginning to fall from his eyes again. “Even if it’s not just that…Sal, I can’t not be there for you. I can’t leave you to face all of those years alone.”

Salazar feels as if his breath is trying to come too fast. Gods, no wonder he came in here to discover that his little brother was panicking! “Nizar— _how?_ ”

They have known for a long while that there is no way to magically travel forward in time. Rowena introduced them to the magician in the Empire who knows of traveling back in time, and Salazar thinks he knows of how such a spell might work, but that is still _backwards._ For this, they would both need to go forwards. Worse, Salazar believes Nizar is correct regarding the age he must be in that memory. That is experience lived, not time passed over. “You said once yourself that you felt as if you were never meant to return!”

Nizar rolls his eyes and wipes his face again. “And _you_ said that the idea felt incomplete. Maybe this is why, Sal!”

“I don’t want it to be!” Salazar yells. “I do not want to—I do not want to see you suffer!”

“And you think I want to witness you suffer in my stead? Absolutely not,” Nizar growls back. “In that memory, you acted as if I would return. I think…” His brows draw together. “I think you were afraid, but you had no doubt about that return. I know you too well now not to be capable of seeing that. There _must_ be a way for us both to survive the centuries until after that point in time.”

“And I know of no such means. I could have been anywhere from five to twenty-five years older than I am now when I seem to have…”

“Ceased aging?” Nizar suggests.

Salazar shudders. “Yes, that. That passage of time, though, that means it must _take_ time to discover a way.” That helps calm him. He is not losing his brother, not yet. Maybe he doesn’t at all; perhaps this is a journey they will undertake together.

Salazar knows himself, though, just as he knows Nizar. At the moment, he knows nothing of that sort of extended, unchanging life beyond what a Horcrux grants, and neither of them would create such a thing. Not even for this.

“Why today?” Salazar finds himself asking. Even to him, the words feel abrupt. “Why would you only now recognize what should have been obvious years ago?”

“Possibly from the moment you decided upon a beard?” Nizar shakes his head. “I don’t know. Precognition, perhaps.”

“Sight. Foresight.” Salazar closes his eyes, and at once he can sense something trying to gain his attention. He focuses with careful breath and Mind Magic, allowing his talents to distinguish and define that hinted point.

His eyes fly open a moment later. “Shit! Fucking shit, not that!”

“Salazar?” Nizar grips his shoulder in alarm. “Brother, what?”

Salazar clutches Nizar’s arm with both hands. _No. No, no, no._ _Please_.

He knows there is no use in begging. Nizar knew it, also. The very fact that it was Salazar himself who sent Nizar to the first day of March in 990 proves that this is something that _must_ be. “It’s this year,” he whispers. “Whatever means that are crafted for you to follow me on that path require power. It must be this year, or it will not be possible at all—and I think, little brother, that it would be very, very bad if we miss.”

“Why this year?” Nizar’s eyes go shock-wide again. “Helga. Her illness. Every time it surges forth, we fight it and win, but her magic is always uncertain for days afterward.”

“That malignancy will not kill her, not for a long while, but after this year, her strength will not be what it was,” Salazar realizes, and the idea pains him almost as much as what he saw within the Pensieve. “Whatever it is we do, Helga will only have the strength to assist us this year, and we’ll need her. I do not yet know why, but we do.”

Nizar’s grip on his shoulder suddenly tightens. “Samhain,” he says, his eyes unfocused and distant as he reads whatever his own spark of Divination tells him. “Hallowe’en.” He releases a bitter laugh. “How fitting. It must be done by Samhain, because whatever we do in regards to myself, it must also _end_ on Samhain.”

“The day between the years,” Salazar breathes. It is a belief of his father’s people, and of the Britons, the Gaeils, and the Picts, that Samhain exists as a point of transition from the old year to the new one. Even though they now all rely on modern calendars and dates, the respect for that day, and its power, has never waned.

“Yes.” Nizar swallows. “But it’s March, Sal. It is already fucking _March._ I—Sal—” His voice breaks.

Salazar lunges forward and wraps his arms around his little brother. Nizar’s fingers dig into his back as he clings, as if he intends never to let go. “Little brother. This is not what you deserve.”

“Neither of us do, Sal,” Nizar gasps out. “No one does.”

* * * *

“We have to determine the means to send Nizar back to his original time, as he is, ready to face Voldemort and destroy that looming threat.” Rowena looks heartbroken as she speaks the words. Godric is furious. Helga chooses to sit on Nizar’s opposite side, holding his hand. Marion has stolen both of Salazar’s hands, squeezing them so tightly that his fingertips are growing numb.

“You’re certain?” Sedemai asks. She looks to be as angry as Godric, but she can ask the question without snarling about it.

Salazar nods. “We are. Nizar—the memory of that time. The other magician involved was certain of his return.” Nizar gives him an odd look for not saying it was himself, but remains silent. “That certainty means that they might know of his return already, though I do not even want to think about what it would mean to dwell in two places in the same moment.”

“Fucking hell,” Alicia whispers. “How in the Almighty’s name do you propose to do such a thing?”

Nizar shrugs. “I have no idea and welcome suggestions. I don’t actually want to do this, by the way. I’m happy as I am.”

“You are _not_ happy,” Helga points out, glaring at Nizar.

“Fine!” Nizar scowls back at her. “I’m _content_ as I am. I also know when I’m being slapped in the face by magic, telling me to figure out a solution to a problem I’d rather remain unsolved, or else…”

“Else what?” Marion prods when Nizar doesn’t finish speaking.

“I don’t know. It didn’t feel right, though. In fact, it felt very, very wrong,” Nizar murmurs. “Shit.”

Rowena purses her lips before speaking. “The most terrible part of all this is that I think I already know of a way. It will not be a speedy passage, but I believe it could be done.”

Salazar clenches his jaw. Grief is still a storm cloud in Nizar’s eyes, a raw reflection of what he knows is coming, and of what has been. He still mourns Elfric and Brice, both so young, both lost by terrible means. Galiena has borne Nizar four grandchildren with Uriel. Drystan and Paynel are already running around the school, causing mischief between lessons, but Vanora is too young for schooling. Muriel is literally still a babe in arms. Nizar knows exactly what he will leave behind, and Salazar worries it might break him.

Salazar feels like he has already broken, shattered on the rocks below the face of a cliff. He would rather there be no way, but Nizar is right. Whenever he dwells on Nizar not finding a way to accomplish this by Samhain, everything suddenly feels _wrong_.

“What way, Rowena?”

Rowena’s idea turns out to be based in Preservation magic. Specifically, in how that magic is tied to the portraits that grace Hogewáþ’s halls. “They are Preserved by the magic that created them, which is reinforced by Hogewáþ’s magic,” she explains. “Take that idea, and the magic used, and then increase it by an exponential amount!”

“You mean to do so by tapping into the Founding Stone of Hogewáþ.” Godric is calmer the next day, but no less disturbed. Salazar knows Godric is still angry at the accurately perceived injustice, and struggling with his own grief.

“But I would still be passing nearly a thousand years in a painting. What would that do to my memory?” Nizar asks. “Or my sanity, for that matter?”

Helga and Rowena exchange glances. “Mere Preservation Charms would not be enough. They would require the strength of true enchantments,” Helga says. “Rowena means this to be a working crafted and fueled by exponential power, and tying such enchantments to Hogewáþ herself would certainly do so. You would be, in essence, held still in time, yet remain aware of its passage. Whatever your appearance is when you are bound to that working would not change. The same would apply to your mind and spirit. Theoretically.”

“Theoretically,” Nizar repeats dryly.

Helga smiles at him. “It isn’t as if we’ve ever done this before, dearheart. You would retain new information, as our portraits do, but otherwise continue on with all of your knowledge, strengths, and skills intact.”

“Never to age or die until the working ends, though I may be bored witless in the meantime,” Nizar translates. “Well. That will be interesting.”

Salazar doesn’t think _interesting_ is the correct word. This is absolutely fucking _horrifying_.

“You will still be here with us,” Rowena insists. “A portrait can communicate with the outer world, even if they cannot physically interact with it. This would not truly be a farewell.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Rowena, and that is a gift, of sorts…but Samhain truly will be a farewell,” Nizar replies. “I’ll be informing my daughter tonight. If Galiena wants the rest of the family to be here until Samhain, that will be hers and Uriel’s decision to make…” He trails off, beginning to frown.

Salazar knows that expression. “Gods, what now?”

“Why a painting?” Nizar asks, his gaze sharp and focused as he looks to Rowena. “Your reasoning, in detail. Please.”

Rowena has long been accustomed to the sudden shifts in thought Nizar often subjects them to, and is not offended. “A magical portrait is, by its very nature, a record of a moment in time. Not only that, it is a magical item that can continue to collect and record. A normal magical portrait will always retain the qualities and characteristics captured when it was painted, but magical portraits can also _learn._ Where we see a flat image, their lives are fully realized, and in Hogewáþ, they travel from frame to frame when the mood strikes.”

“An unchanging recording. The nature of the item itself will assist these unique Preservation Charms in doing their work,” Godric says. “I had been wondering why you would suggest a painting.”

“That is the problem though, the one that has to be fixed, or else this won’t work.” Nizar’s hands are slightly raised, as if he wants to magically refine his words, but doesn’t know how. “I am _not_ a portrait, I’m a person—and please, let us keep it that way, as I have no wish to suddenly be composed of nothing but mixed paints. A portrait might find themselves within a fully developed world, but I wouldn’t. It would be flat canvas, like being trapped between two walls of rock that are slowly squeezing the life out of you.”

Marion narrows her eyes. “But you’ve already thought of some means around that difficulty.”

Nizar smiles at her. “Geomancy. Granted, I have no idea how to apply Geomancy to a painting, but this would _have_ to be crafted magical space. It would remain flat to anyone viewing the painting, but within the confines of the portrait, a fully developed world really would need to exist, one based on extended magical space. Something tangible, something with room in which to breathe and be, else no charms or magic would prevent me from quickly losing my mind from the reality of living in a sarding box.”

“Oh—oh, _bollocks!_ ” Sedemai exclaims in immediate frustration. “I understand what Nizar is trying to say, and it isn’t just Geomancy that is needed. If it is Nizar who figures out how to apply that magic to a world of canvas and paint, he can’t be the one to charm the painting. None of his magic can create this working at all.”

“Because Nizar’s magic, and the magic of the painting, might be in conflict.” Rowena groans and buries her face in her hands. “You know, I’d thought the worst difficulty in this mad quest would be the actual act of putting a person in a painting in such a way that they would be capable of coming back out again.”

“Pensieve.” Salazar snaps his fingers several times as he realizes that this puzzle does have an answer. They have all the answers they need already, and those answers are right under their fucking noses. “The magic of a Pensieve takes you into another world, a world of fully immersive memory, and yet you come out again as yourself, just as you went in. If such magic can be applied to a mere bowl, then why not canvas?”

“It isn’t only that. We need to go to Eithnemael,” Nizar says. “I think we’ll still miss something, otherwise, and she is now the only living practitioner of Pictish magic I’m aware of aside from myself.”

Helena frowns. “Then she should come here. This does not sound like the type of magical working that should leave Hogewáþ.”

“No,” Nizar snaps. “Eithnemael has not set foot in this castle since her husband died. I will _not_ force my daughter-in-law to come here, not when it would hurt her.” He stands up, an abrupt act that startles Helena and Sedemai both. “My apologies. I need a few moments,” he says, and leaves the room.

Godric waits until the door has shut behind Nizar. “This is not what any of us want for him.”

“Not in the least.” Salazar’s heart now lives in his throat, a constant, painful reminder that the days are growing longer, and his time with Nizar is growing ever shorter.

“Why did you not tell them?” Nizar asks Salazar that evening. They’re both laying on the rug in Nizar’s quarters, well beyond sodden and possibly nearing hallucinatory.

“Tell them what?” Salazar asks, surprised he doesn’t slur and make a mess of the words.

“About the fact that it was you who started this. Or ended it? If time is a circle, then I suppose it can’t be either, can it?” Nizar muses.

“I do not know about the circle…thing…but the other part?” Salazar shakes his head. “It did not feel correct to do so. Instinct, little brother.”

“Instinct.” Nizar props himself up on one elbow. “You know, history—my history—says that you have a disagreement with the other Founders, or with Godric. I can’t remember which it is. The point, though, is that my history says you leave Hogewáþ and never return.”

Salazar grimaces. “That has the mark of terrible, unending sadness. It also sounds as if I need to seek out my means of following you on this stupid path. Wait, what would a disagreement have to do with any of this?”

“I think I might be too pissed for this conversation,” Nizar mutters. “What I mean is, if the others knew what you were about, they wouldn’t disagree with you. They would be loading you down with anything they believed might _help_ you.”

He thinks on that for a time. “Or your history is wrong. Your history also claims me to be vile.”

“Maybe not all of it is. My saying there was a disagreement is actually removing quite a bit of the context we’re taught in which that disagreement occurred. I think that part was true, and it means…the others don’t know why you leave. That’s why you didn’t tell them.”

Salazar sits up long enough to pour himself another full goblet of Death in a Bottle. “That makes too much sense. I like it not at all. Nizar, I have no idea what to do. I don’t know where to begin.”

“Well, you’ll certainly be older,” Nizar says, “and I doubt Marion would be all that impressed by the idea of wandering the earth while Betisa is still a toddler.”

“Or while she remains an uneducated magician.” Salazar sighs. “It still makes no sense not to tell them, but the instinct is so strong.”

“Your survival,” Nizar suddenly realizes. “That’s why they aren’t told, else history might record something about you being off on a mad quest for immortality. You leave here to find the manner of…whatever it is that causes you to live until that day in 1,995 while also looking…so…”

“Not like Myrddin,” Salazar finishes, voice flat. “This is harsh and unfair, and I’d give almost anything to make it unnecessary.”

Nizar steals his goblet instead of searching out what he’s done with his own, taking a drink. “Give. Trade. Huh.”

Salazar glares at his brother until the goblet is returned, empty of its contents. That was ill-mannered of him. “What is going through your very sodden mind right now?”

“I’m giving you my Invisibility Cloak,” Nizar says, surprising Salazar. “I’m not taking it into the painting with me.”

“Why not?”

Nizar blinks and focuses on him. “You once told me that it felt like that Cloak didn’t belong here, even though it also felt like it belonged to me.”

Salazar truly cannot decide now if he is too sodden, or still far too sober. “It still feels that way. That remains unchanged. Why?”

“It might be the sort of magic that conflicts with what will ultimately be the world’s oddest flat, painted Pensieve,” Nizar replies. “If you’re going to survive for a thousand years, I want that Cloak on your back, protecting you.”

“Fair enough,” Salazar grants him. “Though I’ll be giving it back to you after the task is done.”

Nizar waves that off. “Whatever. I had another point…oh, yes! If the Cloak doesn’t feel like it’s of this Earth, then where the fucking hell did it come from?”

Salazar opens his mouth and finds that he has no answer. “That…that is a very good question.”

They find an artist skilled enough to work with a practitioner of Geomancy, and who is willing to endure Eithnemael’s grieving, angry company, to craft a painting that can actually do as Rowena first described. It takes months of work to complete, including the act of Nizar giving up a phial of blood that will later help to safely ensnare him in a fucking canvas Pensieve.

When the painting is finally done, Salazar is the one to show it to Nizar. They spread it out along the table in Nizar’s sitting area, the only safe place in his quarters to view such a thing. Galiena, Uriel, and their four children have temporarily moved back into the castle, the better to spend time with Nizar, and the clutter of small children is often underfoot.

Nizar studies the canvas, his head tilted to one side. The artist created the full spread of a large stone dwelling, though no walls block the sight of the inside. There is a sitting area, a kitchen, a sleeping chamber, a full bathing room with privy—their other portraits have no need to use such things, but Nizar is not a portrait, and thus they have no idea what might ultimately be required. There is a small room for brewing, if the mood strikes and it’s possible to perform. Books of specific titles, spelled to be true books instead of blank facsimiles, are on shelves in the sitting room and in the sleeping chamber, along with quill, ink, and paper. The kitchen larder is stocked, and Salazar does _not_ want to know how such was accomplished. Doors opens on both sides of the cottage to allow access to a garden and the field painted behind the stone cottage. The magic of Preservation will apply to everything within, assuring that the plants will always grow and thrive, that nothing can rot or wither.

“All right,” Nizar finally says. “Is this entire thing going to be visible? That is…there are no real places to hide from prying eyes.”

“Only the sitting room of the home will be visible once it is set in a frame,” Salazar explains, gently folding the canvas to reveal the sitting room and its stone archways on either side. “You will be within the magic of this ridiculous painted Pensieve. You will have access to the rest of the home and garden by simply walking through the doors, but the rest of the painting will be wrapped around the back, hidden and covered by a panel. Rowena believes that panel will function as true walls for the interior of the portrait once the magical working is complete. The torches and candles painted into those rooms will ensure that they are not dark rooms unless you want them to be.”

Nizar looks reassured by the idea of areas hidden away from those who will be able to view the painting, but no less enthused about dwelling in one. “Kanza has to go with me, Sal.”

Salazar stares at him. “Nizar, no. Kanza needs to be with Jalaf. They will grow to be the guardians of this school—they agreed to it, brother.”

“I know they did.” Blinking his eyes several times does not help Nizar to dispel the redness haunting them. “But that was before, Sal. Even Kanza is insisting upon it. She goes where I do.”

“Jalaf will be alone.” _And so will I, eventually,_ Salazar thinks, and then veers away from that terrible realization.

Nizar glances at Salazar. “One of us will be alone, yes. Where should Kanza go, Salazar?”

Salazar hugs his brother, swears viciously, and then goes to tell Rowena of the additional living creature that the painting will be Preserving. He thinks it a terrible idea, but what is he to do? Condemn his brother to nearly one thousand years in a canvas Pensieve, completely and utterly alone?

“How are you not more upset by this?” Salazar asks Galiena the night of the summer Solstice. He has had, perhaps, several goblets of wine too many, but gods, he wants to know how she can remain so composed when it feels like Salazar’s world is crumbling into dust.

“Uncle…” Galiena bites her lip. “I lost one brother in 1012, and the other in 1015. You and Father both live dangerous lives, and you have dangerous reputations. You must understand: I much prefer knowing that my father will _live_ than to think he might die as Elfric did, alone and forgotten, with none of us knowing what was done to him—” She clamps her hand over her mouth and breathes until she is steady again. “I am losing my ability to touch my father. But I am not losing his voice or his counsel, and I know that he will be safe. I can bear that, Uncle.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Salazar admits.

“You have to.” Galiena takes his hand and rests her head against his shoulder. “For Marion, Fortunata, Ouen, Zumar, Imeyna, and Betisa. You must be their rock when the waves begin to crash, just as I must be the rock for Paynel, Drystan, Vanora, and Muriel, though Muriel will grow up knowing nothing of her grandfather but a portrait.”

It takes a full month of searching the castle to find the best place to align the painting with the flow of the Founding Stone’s magic, which provides magical strength and potential to the whole of the Hogewáþ. They find themselves in the receiving room in the dungeons, built for those who dwell in the castle during their apprenticeship to a Deslizarse.

“There.” Helga points at the fireplace. “Just above the hearth, in the center. That is an outer wall with something behind it—a cave, I think.”

“It’s a passageway to the lake,” Salazar tells her. “That wall rotates.”

“Rotation will not matter,” Helga says. “There is a strong vein of magic, and it will remain within that stone no matter which way it’s facing. That will fuel the magic of the painting.”

Salazar looks around to discover that Nizar is staring up at the magically reinforced glass that runs along the ceiling. There is a merperson looking back at him, making rude faces in a bid to gain Nizar’s ire.

“I’m glad I like green,” Nizar murmurs. “That it has so many vibrant colors hiding within it.” Then he smiles. “In my time, this is the Slytherin Common Room, their receiving room. I was only in here once before, in 1,992. I sat in front of that fireplace. If my Mind Magic isn’t supplying me with hopeful hallucinations, I remember that there was a painting on the wall above the hearth.”

“What did you see of this painting?” Godric asks.

“There was no person visible, which wasn’t uncommon. There were many roaming portraits in the school, traveling from frame to frame.” Nizar lowers his head and gazes at the fireplace. “But I think…I think it was that room. That painted sitting room.”

“A circle,” Rowena murmurs under her breath, but her eyes hold a wealth of sadness.

Salazar goes back to his quarters that evening feeling like the earth beneath his feet no longer makes sense. Marion sees the look on his face and takes him into their sleeping chamber, and then she takes him into her body. They rock together in a comforting tangle of limbs while she murmurs nonsense reassurances under her breath. He shudders through his release and then weeps with his head resting on her shoulder.

* * * *

The last memory from the Pensieve is the shortest, and belongs to James’s grandfather. It’s easy to tell that it’s from the same day as the first memories they viewed, though this time, Granddad, Gran, Mum, and Dad’s faces are filled with exhausted distress.

James knows _exactly_ how they feel.

“I can’t stop something destined from happening, not directly,” is where Granddad’s memory begins. Saul is toying with a cup of tea, tapping his fingers along the sides rather than drinking it. “I learned that lesson, and it was a painful one, at that. I swore afterwards that I would never again have a damned thing to do with France, and then World War I began.” He shakes his head. “It was only a few years ago that I realized I’d been overlooking the obvious for a very long time.”

“History believes Salazar Slytherin is dead,” Mum says. “And yet he is sitting at our table.”

“Exactly.” Saul finally gives up on the tea. “If history can be true and false at the same time, then perhaps it isn’t the truth that matters. Perhaps it’s the _belief_ in that history that is most important, the things that are written down, the ideas that spread.”

Granddad raises an eyebrow. “You want to circumvent history.”

Saul spreads his hands. “I am living proof that it can work. There are several members of the Underground whom history believes to be very much deceased, yet they still live and breathe, as well.”

“History says that we’re all meant to be dead when my grandson is orphaned,” Dad points out.

“Actually, I’ve no idea if history records any such thing,” Saul replies. “Nizar was told only that his aunt was his only remaining family. Then he was told that he _had_ to live with that remaining family without being informed as to why. It was easy to infer that Albus Dumbledore meant my little brother to believe that it had to be his mother’s family he lived with for that sacrificial protection to work, when in fact that had never been the case at all. Not unless Albus Dumbledore did something to change the nature of that sacrificial blood protection.”

“What, though?” Elizabetha asks. “Nothing could have changed such a protection. Not even Albus Dumbledore is that powerful.”

“No, but the bastard is swanning about with the fucking Elder Wand,” Saul says in obvious disgust. “Gods know what sort of magic he’s actually done with it.”

“How the actual bleeding fuck did Albus end up with the Elder Wand?” Dad blurts out in shock.

“The European Wizarding War,” Granddad guesses, eying Saul. “Grindelwald held it, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Saul confirms. “It’s part of what made Grindelwald so bloody annoying. Albus Dumbledore claimed ownership of the Wand after defeating him, and that meant the magic of the Hallows recognized him as its new bearer.”

“Good God,” Mum murmurs under her breath.

“That is not important, though, at least not at the moment. I remind you that we do not know when you supposedly die, or where, or how. I imagine, though, that you must have at least been considered to be deceased, or you would have fought Albus Dumbledore tooth and nail to retrieve Harry from his aunt’s dubious care.”

“Maybe we’re really meant to be, then,” Gran says, looking thoughtful.

“Maybe you are,” Saul admits, “but I will not simply allow it to happen. If it cannot be stopped, we’ll know, because it _won’t_ be stopped.”

“Then you won’t know about James and his future spouse,” Mum says. “Not until after their child is born.”

“No; I will literally have to stand in their company to discover such.” Saul grimaces. “If magic herself doesn’t prevent me from getting anywhere near them.”

Gran glances outside. “You will, though. I’m certain of it.”

Saul looks at her rather than following Gran’s gaze. “Certain of that meeting, or certain of their survival?”

“Of the meeting.” Gran hums a melody from a song that came with her family from India. “Of the rest? I think that will depend upon them.”


	36. Brothers Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's birthday is the last time all of the Marauders will stand in the same place, with one of them still pretending they're all still on the same side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just realized it's Western Calendar New Year's Eve tomorrow, followed by Hungover New Year's Day, so...posting this week's chapter tonight. May 2021 be amazing. We've had enough shitshows.
> 
> Beta-read-flailed at by @norcumii, who is probably tapping their foot waiting for me to finish this story already. <3

James reaches into the back of the refrigerator and snags two bottles. Lily is upstairs in their bedroom; she said she wanted to be alone in that tone that meant yes, she really did mean it. James can’t settle, though. His head is too full, and he’s always wanted to talk through those times, not stew in it. With alcohol in his hands, he’s off to hunt down their houseguest.

He should have asked Lily if alcohol counteracts a Calming Draught. Oh, well; too late now. He is committed to the act of becoming much less sober.

Salazar went no further than the darkened front parlor to sit in a chair facing the window. His face is bathed in the deep blue light of pre-dawn, which reveals glittering trails of moisture on his face.

He sits up at James’s approach and wipes his face with his hands. “My apologies.”

“I really don’t think any apologies are needed.” James holds out a corked bottle of mead. “Not as strong as I’d like, but I don’t want to keep liquor around with a baby in the house. I don’t want to be so pissed that I’m not looking after him properly.”

“Thank you.” Salazar accepts the bottle and slumps back in the chair again. “I appreciate the kindness.”

“You’re welcome.” James takes a seat near the window. A few of their neighbors are already traipsing down the walkway, heading into the village to open their shops for the last workday of the week. “My wife says I have the tact of a brick, so I might as well work with it. I know how we’re related now—shit, I know so much about the Founder’s Era that I think my head might explode later.” Salazar offers him a rueful smile. “But none of those memories mentioned where You-Know-Who came from, Saul.”

Salazar pulls the cork from the bottle, giving it a brief examination, before he Banishes it. “Sal is fine. Saul is a serviceable name, and I’d ask you to use it in front of others who do not know who I am, but…to family, my name is Sal.”

James tries not to flinch. He isn’t insulted by the idea of being related to Salazar—Sal—but any mention of family of late makes him feel as if the worst is about to happen. He has to recognize it, though. Dad, Mum, Granddad, Gran, they’d all claimed Salazar, and Salazar had done his best by them, every single time. The last time doesn’t count, not when that blood ward had kept them both away from the house.

His child is sleeping upstairs, and he’s a year old today. He’s also somewhere else, an adult who James wants so desperately to sit down with, to listen to, to say how fucking _proud_ he is of the man Harry-claimed-Nizar became. He doesn’t give a damn about an impending magical adoption that already happened. No matter his name, Harry is always going to be James’s son.

“Sal, then. If You-Know-Who is really a direct descendant, how did that happen? I mean, aside from the obvious part that involves making a baby.”

Salazar grins at James’s attempt at levity, as it he truly appreciates it instead of thinking James daft. “I’ve been married five times. You saw my first two wives in the Pensieve.”

“Only five times in a thousand years?”

“If I am going to speak those vows to someone, then I am particular,” Salazar responds. “That doesn’t mean I had no other relationships. Some were serious; some were friendships; some were merely brief instances of wanting to share a bed. A few children resulted from such dalliances, always by accident. One can be as careful and cautious as ever, and sometimes fate decides such things for you. Only two of those accidental children survived long enough to have children of their own. The scant result of one direct bloodline dwells in the United States, and none of them have been magical in all of these centuries.”

“And the other one?” James asks.

“In 1961, I told your father that I suspected You-Know-Who was the product of myself and the Lady Milescenta Fawcett, who I knew for a brief time in the early 1400s.” Salazar takes a drink of mead and makes a face. “Gods, someone needs to watch where their bees are wandering off to. I realized quickly that I was not fond of the lady’s company, and the dalliance ended. When we parted ways, she was pregnant. She either didn’t tell me, or didn’t yet know. Milescenta married another man not long afterwards, a visiting English Gaunt magician named Utredus. I was still lingering in that area of France when they wed, attended the wedding, and congratulated them afterwards. Milescenta curtseyed and smiled, all the while knowing she had stolen Marion’s locket from me while I remained blissfully unaware.”

“I’m sorry.” James wouldn’t have understood how important that locket was before, not really. It was just part of Wizarding Britain’s history, an artifact. Now he’s seen memories of that locket around the neck of a beautiful Gaelic woman named Marion, a teacher at Hogwarts, who’d been a bright, shining ruby in so many lives.

Salazar inclines his head. “Thank you. Milescenta Fawcett had a child within eight months of the marriage, a son, who carried on the Gaunt name. I’ve had time since 1961 to finish tracking that bloodline. You-Know-Who, birth name Tom Marvolo Riddle, is the last survivor born of that now-deceased family.”

“That isn’t a wizarding name. How would You-Know-Who have found out that he was your descendant?”

Salazar’s expression turns flat and angry. “The Gaunts knew of their heritage, which they flaunted whenever possible from the eighteenth century onwards. Gods, they were an annoying batch of irritating insects. I thought for a very long time that their claims must be false, especially when the family began fading into obscurity. They bred themselves out of existence by refusing to marry anyone who wasn’t of acceptable blood status. Eventually, only those of their own literal blood were considered worthy, and they completed the family bloodline’s destruction by way of severe incest.”

James feels nauseated. “Worse than Pollux’s branch of the Blacks?”

“Oh, far worse. The Gaunts make the Blacks look like amateurs in that regard,” Sal says. “You-Know-Who had the same means to locate his family that I once used: the fact that he was named for his father, Tom Riddle, and the name of his mother, Merope Gaunt Riddle. In the summer of 1943, he found his mad uncle, Morfin Gaunt, in a little village called Little Hangleton within the North York Moors. It was equally easy for him to locate the Riddle family. Tom Marvolo Riddle murdered his father and grandparents, framed his maternal uncle for the crime, and created his very first Horcrux, all on the same day. He was sixteen years old.”

“Jesus Christ,” James whispers.

Salazar knocks back quite a bit of mead before speaking again. “In June of 1944, at the age of seventeen, You-Know-Who murdered Myrtle Warren to create his second Horcrux. Perhaps you’ve heard of her.”

James nods. “Dad told me about Moaning Myrtle. After I graduated, he told me who killed her. He just didn’t mention the Horcrux bit.”

“For good reason,” Salazar replies. “Aside from those in the Americas, and You-Know-Bloody-Who, the only survivors related to me by blood are you and your son.”

James stares at him in consternation. “But—wait. In those memories, you had a mini-horde running around Hogwarts!”

“Once upon a time, we did.” Salazar glances beyond James; his eyes look like they might be tracking someone who is walking by. “The plagues were harsh things, James. After they were done, I could only easily find those who were descended from my eldest daughter…and then, early in this century, the Spanish Influenza took them, as well.”

James tries not to wince. Maybe Lily is right about his brick-like tact. He wasn’t trying to find yet another sore subject. “I’m truly sorry. Is that why you looked so shocked when you met my grandfather in Nuremberg?”

Salazar smiles. “Tom Riddle aside, it was the first time in very long while that I’d encountered my family’s magic in another. Yes, it was quite the shock.”

James focuses on his mead for a few minutes, chewing that over. “That means Galiena’s children—if you couldn’t find anyone else from your family, that means they’re gone, too. Aren’t they?”

“I think they would have to be,” Salazar admits quietly. “And I have no idea what I will tell Nizar of their fate.”

“Plagues again?”

“Most likely.”

“Well…” James glances up. “At least it meant nobody in my family was marrying their own descendants?”

Salazar bursts into unexpected laughter. James thinks he sounds out of practice at it. Granted, he is, too. “That is true enough.”

“Sal?”

Salazar empties the bottle of mead, Summons the cork from wherever he Banished it, and shoves it back into place. “Yes, James?”

“If this works…” No, there is no if. James has to be bloody well certain that it will. He won’t let Lily die. He won’t let Sirius spent the rest of his life without them. That fucking gap of fourteen years is already too long, and he hates that they can’t change it. He hates that Peter is going to send an innocent man to Azkaban in his place, and that in 1995, he’s still a free bastard rat.

His son wants them to survive, even though Harry-Nizar already knows that it means he grows up without them. Salazar showed him those memories, too.

 _Many people died during Voldemort’s first war. Perhaps they didn’t have to_ _._

“When this works,” James starts over, “my son is going to be forty-two years old when I see him again.” Salazar nods, but doesn’t interrupt. “And once we pass that—that collision point, I guess, in Hallowe’en 1995, then Lily and I won’t have to worry about playing dead anymore. Right?”

“Theoretically,” Salazar replies. “I don’t know if either of you, or anyone in the Underground, will be able to rush out and reclaim your lives the following day. You-Know-Who will still be an active threat, one who will again have a body, with devoted followers standing at his side.”

“Because he’ll torture my son in a cemetery to get one,” James spits, blinking away the burning tears from his eyes. He is still so Goddamned angry over events that he can’t change, because if Salazar is right, time and magic won’t let them change it. These fucking things are going to happen, and _it’s not right!_

“No. It isn’t right,” Salazar murmurs, and shakes his head when James glares at him in silent question. “You were taught by four brilliant practitioners of Mind Magic, James. Your shields did not slip. Some things are obvious, and understandable, and they are feelings I share.” Salazar’s smile is nothing but a wealth of bitterness that almost makes James cringe. “Self-fulfilling prophecies, James. Gods, but I hate them. I once promised my little brother that I would _never_ let any of those fucking bastards hurt him again. Not You-Know-Who, not the blasted worthless Dursleys, and yet here I am, ensuring it will happen anyway.”

“No. You aren’t the one who places my son with Petunia and Vernon Dursley.” James sucks in an angry breath that tastes like betrayal. “That—that’s going to be Albus. I just don’t get—how fucking _could_ he? Lily has other bloody family! Unless they’ve been killed, and that’s yet another thing Peter didn’t fucking tell us!”

“As far as I am aware, they are all still alive, including your wife’s aunt, and will still be alive after Hallowe’en this year.” Salazar nods when James swears under his breath, every single word he can think of in English and Punjabi. He’s pretty sure Gran would understand and forgive him the foul language.

“Do you think Albus knew about the Horcrux, too?”

“That, I could not tell you. None of us have any real idea of how much Albus Dumbledore might know of Horcruxes, including how to identify a living one rather than a physical vessel.”

“Yeah.” James swallows down the last of his mead, thinking he really doesn’t have enough alcohol in the house to cope with this shit. “As much as I dislike Petunia—and I really, _really_ do—I don’t want Lily to kill her sister. Honestly, I think I’d rather get there first, but then it’s me orphaning a child. Even if Dudley grows up to be a shit teenager, I was one of those once, too. Taking Dudley’s parents away from him probably wouldn’t help much.”

“No matter what fate befalls Vernon and Petunia Dursley, you have the vengeance of knowing that in the meantime, Petunia will endure eighteen years of her husband’s delightful, troll-like company.”

“You’re being cruel to British cave trolls, comparing them to my brother-in-law,” Lily says.

James glances over at the parlor’s open entryway to find Lily leaning against the wood framing. “Are you all right?”

Lily shakes her head. “Not in the least. You?”

James snorts. “Nope.”

Lily nods and sighs. “I think the worst part is that I’m so angry at Remus right now. I’m angry that he’d leave Harry with Petunia when he’s Harry’s _godfather_ , and he hasn’t even done it yet!”

“I don’t know why Remus Lupin does so, as Nizar was never told,” Salazar answers the question Lily hadn’t quite asked. “Perhaps he did try, and Albus Dumbledore insisted otherwise. Perhaps Remus Lupin knew he would be caught out as a werewolf from being unable to work during the full moon, and feared what might happen to your son.”

“But there’s a stipend vault!” James protests. “If anything happens to us, there is already a vault that provides for Harry’s care until he’s of age to inherit the family vault!”

“Stipend vault.” James is suddenly staring at a man who has killed many, and regretted not a bit of it. He’s really fucking glad that expression isn’t meant for him. “I see.” Then the expression is put away, and James feels his shoulders relax. “Is Remus Lupin aware of this vault’s existence?”

“I—oh. Oh, shit,” James realizes. “No! We hadn’t told him yet. We set it up after Harry was born, but with the Fidelius Charm and the war, the others haven’t really been here much. We didn’t…he didn’t know. He doesn’t know, he didn’t know, and now he _can’t_ know.”

That hits hard, like someone punching James in the chest with a troll-sized fist. He fucked up, and it isn’t just Harry who will pay for that. Remus’s father has poured so much into this war in order to eliminate threats like Fenrir Greyback. James knows the Lupin family is approaching poor, if not destitute, saved only by the fact that Remus’s grandmother owns her home in Wales, with her own savings stashed away somewhere. Eglantine Pryce already told them that the house and her savings, if there is anything left when she dies, are for Remus to inherit—no one else. That would give Remus a home, but not money, and he’s already so shit-stubborn about _charity_ …

“The stigma against werewolves is also not your fault,” Salazar says in a dry voice. “Though I understand why you would blame yourself. Stop, though. You cannot afford to wallow in guilt for events beyond your control.”

“Why not? You are,” James retorts.

“And I’m well-practiced at it,” Salazar returns.

“You love him. Don’t you?” Lily suddenly asks. James and Salazar both look at her, but Lily is watching Salazar. “Harry. You love him.”

James glances at Salazar, who has frozen in place. His eyes take on a visible sheen of moisture, but then Salazar blinks and it’s gone. It’s a moment that tells James everything he might ever need to know about Salazar and his intentions. It also makes James realize how _tired_ Salazar is. It isn’t in body or mind, but a heavy weight on the soul.

 _I could not handle living for one thousand years, even knowing there were only fourteen more years to go before I was almost done,_ James thinks. He’s pretty sure he would go mental by the end of the second century, especially when the goal, the entire point, was still eight centuries away.

Especially if it meant leaving everything and everyone else behind.

“Of course I love him,” Salazar tells Lily. “I would not have chosen this path if I did not.”

James sighs. Those words are coming from the man who James was always taught was the worst sort of blood bigot, the one who started the entire idea. The Pure-blood who only approved of other Pure-bloods. Selfish, arrogant, hateful, self-serving.

Instead, Hogwarts was hidden just two years after the school’s Founding to safeguard all the wizards and witches (magicians) within, no matter their blood, their lineage, or their status in society—something all four Founders agreed was necessary. That truth almost makes everything worse, because it means after the Founders were gone, someone changed it. Someone corrupted James’s beloved school and childhood playground with the intention of turning it into a warzone. Their shit idea of blood purity then spread and poisoned all of Wizarding Britain.

Lily smiles, wan and red-eyed and so Goddamned beautiful. “Sal. You should see Harry.”

To James’s surprise, Salazar is already shaking his head. “No. No, I really shouldn’t. I—”

“Yes,” Lily insists, straightening up from her slump against the wall. “I’m not a mind reader, Sal, but I _am_ a mother. I guess there really is something to all the old wives’ tales about motherhood, because this is something I’m certain of. Come and see Harry.”

Salazar follows them upstairs without saying anything, but he hesitates in front of the nursery. If James wasn’t convinced about any of this before, he would be now. The man looks like he’d rather go fight a dragon in the nude.

Lily nudges Salazar. “Go on. I will shove you into that room if you don’t.”

“You may have to do so anyway,” Salazar replies in a low voice, but he pushes open the nursery door.

“Oh, Harry,” Lily says at once in fond disappointment. “You only fell asleep at midnight, sweetheart.”

In the cot, Harry is awake, sitting up and trying to shove his stuffed platypus through the cot’s wooden bars. Remus is to blame for that thing; Moony has odd taste in baby toys.

Salazar looks at the wall across from the cot, where an empty hook protrudes from the painted plaster. “Is that where the tapestry hangs?”

“We thought it was a good place for it—well, Granddad suggested it, really,” James says, glancing at Lily. “He thought it would be a nice thing for a baby to look at.”

“I think it a nice thing for anyone to look at, myself.” Salazar kneels down in front of the cot. Harry drops the platypus and gives his visitor a wide-eyed stare of baby bafflement. “Is he speaking yet?”

“ _Mum, Dad, broom,_ and _no_ ,” Lily lists Harry’s accomplishments. “Especially _no_.”

“I’m not surprised.” Salazar smiles at Harry, who lets out a pleased gurgle and grins, revealing his five new teeth. “He doesn’t like that platypus, either. He’s telling it to get out.”

Lily stiffens in place. “Are you reading my son’s thoughts, too?”

Salazar shakes his head. Then he hisses at Harry, brief and somehow gentle-sounding.

Harry lets out a cackle of absolute delight and _starts hissing back_.

“Okay. Yeah. I was really not prepared for that,” James says in a faint voice. He feels sort of faint, too, even though Salazar warned him that his great-grandfather was a Parselmouth. He already saw the proof of Harry’s ability in the Pensieve, and still he wasn’t prepared.

“Those hissing snores,” Lily gasps. “Oh!”

“All of mine hissed before they spoke a human tongue.” Salazar hisses something else at Harry, who responds the same way before he shoves his chubby little hand through the round cot bars in clear demand. “Oh, that is not a good idea, little one.”

Harry pulls his scrunched-up You’re Daft face, repeatedly opening and closing his hand. Salazar gives up and holds out his finger for Harry to grab. Harry is immediately cheerful again, babbling in a mix of human baby and hissing.

“Parseltongue is easier if you’ve the talent for it. It’s more difficult for a baby’s tongue to manage human sounds. Certain of those can be tricky. Hissing, though—that’s simple enough.”

“I thought maybe the hissing was Harry being upset, or it was just baby babble.” James always dismissed the noises as infant nonsense. What did he know what noises were normal for a baby, anyway? Besides, the snore-hissing is really cute.

“Some of it probably was. Children have to learn what words are in the first place, even for speaking in Parseltongue.” Salazar abruptly stands up. “He wants breakfast, and I really need a moment.” He brushes past James and Lily to leave the room.

Lily bites her lip, but first she goes to Harry’s cot and picks up his platypus. “You want this to go away and not come back, huh?” Harry nods in open-mouthed excitement. “All right, then. We’re all going to fib to your godfather Remus and tell him there was an incident with accidental magic.”

James grins. “Harry’s tossed that thing out of his cot often enough. It was bound to happen eventually.”

Lily throws the platypus at James before she scoops Harry up out of his crib. “The others might not see it, but I always know when you’re lying. Let me tell Remus about the magic-poofed platypus.”

“You do not always know!”

“Absolutely,” Lily says as she comes back to the doorway, stopping in front of James. “Every single time from first year onwards, James Henry Potter.”

James reaches out and taps the slightly snubbed end of Harry’s nose, which always makes his son go cross-eyed as he tried to focus on James’s finger. “Are we doing the right thing, Lil?”

Lily draws in a shaky breath. “I think, one way or another, Harry is going to grow up without us.” She caresses Harry’s hair when he whimpers. “It’s okay, pet. It’s not what you think, I promise.”

“Doesn’t mean it won’t be hard.” James bends over and kisses his son’s forehead, right where that stupid scar is going to be after Hallowe’en. “But maybe it’s the _only_ thing that’s right.”

“I want our son to have the chance to survive this war, and to be happy.” Lily narrows her eyes. “I’d also rather blast You-Know-Who to pieces instead of us all being dangled by Albus as _bait_.”

“You can’t set Albus on fire,” James reminds her.

Lily scowls. The expression is a lot like their son’s You’re Daft face. “Maybe not, but I can imagine it as much as I want.”

“I knew I loved you for a reason.”

Lily raises an eyebrow, her lips curling up in a wide smirk. “That’s because I was the only one with enough sense to tell you to bugger off for nearly six years.”

“That, too,” James says innocently.

Salazar is in their kitchen downstairs, looking at the back of the ancient tapestry. His fingertips are resting on the wooden frame, again revealing its translated words. Lily glances at James and then tilts her head in clear instruction. James waits until she settles Harry in his high chair, where he chirps happily, ready to begin flinging his breakfast at the walls.

Once Harry has dry cereal in his tiny hands, James ventures, “Sal?”

“I was realizing that I can’t recall if Eadgyth was Godric’s first daughter, his second, or his third. I’d thought I had preserved those particular years so well in my head, not wanting to forget any of it…but even with Mind Magic, I’ve still forgotten things. I stood for my cousin Eneko at his wedding, but remembered nothing of their marriage until this tapestry caused me to recall it. One thousand years is a very long time to learn things, but it also provides ample opportunity to forget.”

James tries not to wince. He really isn’t trying to stomp on every sore subject in existence, but he’s not doing a great job of avoiding them, either. “I’m sorry.”

“No need,” Salazar murmurs. “I think I told Henry incorrectly, though. I thought in 1971 that Eadgyth was Godric’s second daughter, but then there is Æthelflæd. I cannot remember the order in which they were born. I think—no. Theodora was his first daughter, but Anglo-Saxon names…maybe I’m wrong, and Eadgyth was the youngest.”

 _Help,_ James mouths at Lily, because he doesn’t know what to do with this.

Lily rolls her eyes at James. “Does it really matter if Eadgyth was Godric’s second daughter, or his third?” she asks Salazar.

Salazar pulls his hand away from the tapestry, where the letters resort back to the odd Pictish symbols. “No. I suppose it does not, but I wish I could remember such things with certainty.” He turns around to face them. “I have to go. I need to return Peter Pettigrew’s wand before he wakes and sobers himself enough to notice it missing.”

James suddenly realizes that he’s bloody exhausted. Everything is starting to catch up with him, and it feels like he’s aged five years in a single night. “When are you coming back?”

“Friday next week, at midnight,” Salazar replies, gathering up all the items he left discarded on their kitchen table. The box is easy to repack; the second Cloak settles into its tray in perfect folds. At least James is used to the cloak behaving that way, even if that one is the Sort-of-His cloak. “I’ll have two of my own spies with me. I swear to you they’re trustworthy.”

“If you’re bringing them into my house, they’d better be,” Lily mutters.

“I’ve not gone to this much trouble just to let some fool with a wand and a grudge kill you,” Salazar responds before turning around, sliding the cherrywood wand into his left sleeve. “You might not like them very much, but liking someone and trusting them are oft two different things.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” James says with a grimace.

Salazar glances back over his shoulder. He hisses first, gaining Harry’s rapt attention. “Keep these two out of trouble, little one. They have promises to keep.”

“And miles to go before we sleep,” Lily whispers. Salazar grants her a nod and then is out the back door, into the rear garden. He Disapparates the moment he’s cleared the house’s Anti-Apparition wards.

Lily wraps her arms around James from behind. “He took everything from the kitchen table except the snake.”

“We’ll put the snake in the back garden in the morning.” James feels too bewildered to laugh as he rests his hands over hers. “Wait. It’s morning already. Later, I guess?”

“Later is soon enough,” Lily agrees. “We have to do something about Sirius, James.”

“We can’t muck about with Azkaban. If Sirius knew what it might cost Harry, he’d agree with us.”

It’s been James and Sirius since they were eleven. Remus and Peter joined in shortly afterwards, but that was the start of everything. James _knows_ what Sirius would say, just as much as he knows that Remus has a stubborn streak wider than the bloody English Channel.

Has he ever had that sort of certainty about Peter? James always thought so before, but maybe it’s like Salazar and that tapestry. He might not be dealing with one thousand years, but he isn’t certain anymore, and that’s terrifying.

James tightens his grip on Lily’s hands. “I want to kill Peter for this. For Sirius and Azkaban. For that fucking cemetery ritual.” Right now, he’s seething with it. He won’t, not yet. Not until after Hallowe’en 1995, but by then, James will have seen all of this shit for himself.

Lily rests her head against his back. “Not if I kill him first, you won’t.”

* * * *

James manages to nab a kip while stretched out in their stupidly wide bed. Harry is between James and Lily, laying there in utter contentment. James doesn’t know if Harry sleeps when he joins them for naps like this, but he’s never once tried to wander off. It’s nice to know his son likes them well enough to hang out even when Mum and Dad are passed out like fallen cinema zombies.

When he wakes up and checks his watch, it’s about eleven-thirty in the morning. Lily is still asleep, or faking it, but James doesn’t blame her. It was a long, long day, followed by a _really_ long night. Then Harry wasn’t okay with the idea of napping until he’d finished eating a few handfuls of cereal, and tossing a fair bit more. Harry always looks disappointed afterwards lately, because Padfoot isn’t there to lap up the mess.

Lily may or may not be sleeping, but Harry isn’t napping, He’s sitting up in a chubby baby pose, hissing at the green garden snake that Salazar left behind in the kitchen dish. The snake is coiled around the whole of Harry’s arm, its head up so it can scent the air.

James feels his heartrate jump somewhere up around the moon in a panic before he wakes up enough to remember that it’s just a grass snake. Not a cobra; just a grass snake. Harry is grinning wide enough to show off all of his teeth, and he burbles laughter when the snake hisses back. To James, the snake’s hissing sounds like angry fan noise, but to Harry, it’s an intelligent creature proving it has just as much to say as anyone else.

He experienced Salazar’s Pensieve memories of speaking Parseltongue, hearing the words in those hisses as Nizar spoke back, and it’s…it’s really amazing. He knew his son was a Parselmouth after that, but it was still kind of academic until that moment in front of the cot, Salazar and Harry hissing at each other, and Harry so _happy_ that someone finally understood what he’d been saying all this time.

“Did you make a new friend, Harry?” James asks, wondering when the snake decided to venture upstairs. Or maybe Harry’s been wandering when Mum and Dad nap, after all, and just chooses not to get into mischief while he’s at it. Just like a Marauder—know when to make a mess, and know when to leave well enough alone.

Harry nods and smiles. Then his face wrinkles in a baby frown of curiosity before he hisses at James.

James can guess what Harry wants to know. “Nope. Sorry, champ. That’s all you.” Harry’s eyes gain the shine of almost-tears. “Hey, it’s okay! It just makes you special, kiddo. Like a secret.”

Harry looks fascinated by the idea of hissing being a secret. James really needs to re-evaluate his ideas on what babies can and can’t understand at this age. Parenthood has definitely taught him that all of those baby books Lily found for them to read are complete rubbish.

James smiles at Harry. “And like every good secret, we don’t tell Uncle Peter, Uncle Remus, or Dad Two. You don’t tell your other father, okay? That way, we can use it against them later.”

Harry giggles again, delighted, and flops back down on the bed with the grass snake, which doesn’t seem to mind being jerked about. “We’ll have to put your friend out into the garden later. Snakes need to eat,” James adds. Harry gives him an easy nod of agreement and then resumes his back-and-forth hissing conversation with the garden snake.

“Are you sure that Sorting Hat never muttered about Slytherin to you?” Lily asks. James glances over to find Lily gazing at him in emerald-eyed amusement. The brighter that emerald shine, the more intense she feels about something, and God, but it’s yet another thing he loves about her.

“I’m pretty sure the Hat probably thought I had enough terrible ideas,” James replies. “We should get up, though. If they’re coming for Harry’s birthday, like Sal suggested, then they’ll probably turn up at noon.”

Lily bites her lip. “I hate that. I hate that it took Legilimency to convince Peter to let Sirius see his own _son_ today.”

“Yeah. I do, too,” James says. “Can you pretend we don’t know that he’s a traitor, Lil? Because I really don’t know if I can do this.”

Lily reaches across Harry. James meets her halfway, taking her hand. “For Harry. Yes, we can do this.”

“For Harry,” James repeats, swallowing down a hint of nausea. “Okay. Aside from what Peter has conveniently not told us, he’s been acting perfectly normal. If Remus or Sirius ask about things Peter _didn’t_ tell us, we figure out how to change the subject…or maybe let Harry tell his new friend here to crawl up someone’s trouser leg. That’d be a good distraction.” Next to him, Harry laughs. “Glad you agree, champ.”

When will that stop, though? James wonders. Will Peter ever change what he does, how he acts? Or will he behave like the perfect friend until it’s the very last time?

He waits his turn for the shower, wanting to rinse off the feel of betrayal instead of just having a quick wash-up in the sink downstairs. Lily dries off and puts on a bright green blouse that matches her eyes, paired with good denims and the beige white-striped trainers she wore when they first visited Lily’s parents. James braids her hair for her, one of the styles he learned from Gran, so that Lily has two braids in the front, two braids hanging down her back, and a fiery braided crown atop her head.

“You think Sirius will like it?” Lily asks, tilting her head as she looks at the mirror.

“Sweetheart, he loves you. You could dye your hair grey and tangle it up in a mess, and Sirius would still love it.” James gives her a soft, gentle kiss, tasting the peppermint from her toothpaste on her tongue. “Are you going the fancy route for Harry’s first birthday, or for Sirius?”

“Maybe both,” Lily says, and then bites her lip. “I didn’t take the potion today.”

His breath catches. “No birth control potion?”

Lily shakes her head. “Do you mind? I should have said something before, but I was…the war, and…”

James kisses her again. “I don’t mind. It’s one hell of a fight against the odds if you get pregnant today, but no. I’ll never mind. Sirius’s kids are mine, ours, just as much as Harry is his.”

Lily sucks in a deep breath. “Oh, God, James. Why would Sirius never tell him?”

“Azkaban. Being terrified out of his wits,” James offers, because he’s been thinking about it, too. “But our son did say in those Pensieve memories that Sirius offered to have Harry live with him, get him away from the fucking Dursleys. It just…it just didn’t work out that way.”

“That damned _rat_ ,” Lily seethes, and then gives James another kiss. “I’m going downstairs to see if the house-elves have delivered the birthday cake. I’ll take Harry and make sure he’s…well, nice clothes can be laundered, and if he doesn’t make a mess, I’ll be very surprised.”

James finally gets his chance to shower, glad that magic is granting him unlimited hot water. He lets the heat soothe the tense, angry muscles in his back, but he doesn’t linger. No time for it.

He gazes into his mirror after giving himself a good shave, healing the few cuts he made because he’s so distracted. He looks good in white, and James has come to prefer wearing Muggle clothing unless he needs to head out in full robes. White t-shirt under a short-sleeved white button-down shirt, untucked today, because bugger that. Denims that have been broken in by now, soft and comfortable instead of stiff. James never really got the hang of trainers, but Muggle boots aren’t half-bad.

His hair is being itself, as usual. James finger-combs the black mess, which catches on his fingertips a few times, and decides that will have to be good enough. He washes the grease from his glasses, gives them a good wipe-down, and puts them back on. Everything is in focus again, including the shadows under his hazel eyes, the sharp definition of his cheekbones, and the stressed set of his mouth.

“Worse happens if you try to change this, or you fuck it up,” James reminds his reflection. “You can’t even interrogate Peter.”

Not yet, he can’t. James will have to ask Salazar about the possibility. Obliviate spells exist, after all, and James desperately wants to know _why._

Lily is right, though. His eyes look too haunted, even for someone who is going stir-crazy from being confined to their own house and back garden for over a year.

James closes his eyes. He and Sirius were the only two entering that speed-run of a Junior Auror training program with proper knowledge of Occlumency, the only two who could keep trained Aurors out of their heads. Given that James and Sirius weren’t the only Pure-bloods, that had struck James as bloody odd, but that was on their parents, not on those potential new Aurors.

Sirius was honest with Moody, Scrimgeour, and Lucretia Prewett about not knowing Legilimency. James was not. He didn’t want to be shoved into the ranks of those who tear through people’s heads to get information. He hates that shit; it goes against everything his family taught him about Legilimency and how to use it. More importantly, they taught him when it was _right_ to use it, and bloody Barty Crouch Senior wants them to use it all the time, every time, damn the consequences, damn the price.

James shoves everything about Salazar, Peter’s treachery, the prophecy, and upcoming Hallowe’en into a properly sized mental box. Then he shoves that lid firmly in place and opens his eyes again.

“Will this do, Lil?” James asks his wife after going downstairs.

Lily glances at him and then performs an actual double-take. “What did you do?”

“Shoved everything into a Legilimency box. By the way, you should remind me to open that box later, because I might forget what I put in there.” James smiles. “But I can’t be caught lying about something nobody else can see.”

Lily grabs him by the front of his shirt and pulls him down into a kiss. “That’s the clever bastard of a Marauder I married, remembering that he has a brain and using it. Go meet them at the door, honey. Harry and I will be waiting in the garden.”

His timing is pretty good. James is fidgeting near the coat rack when the doorbell rings. When he opens the door, it isn’t Peter standing there. It’s Sirius. Clean-shaven, his hair growing longer, his grey eyes tired, but still clear and shining.

Sirius shrugs at James’s baffled stare. “Hi?”

“Oh,” James says, and then shoves Sirius into the doorframe in order to kiss him stupid.

Sirius looks happily gobsmacked. “We’re snogging on our front doorstep now? I can work with this!”

James glances up when there is a loud cough from the front walk. He turns and sees Remus standing there, hands planted on his hips. “You two idiots are lucky that I’m the only person on this street who can see you.”

“Remus!” James gasps, trying not to let his jaw fall open.

Remus shakes his head. “Don’t start. I’m aware of the fact that I look like shit.”

“Consider it un-started,” James responds, forcing a cheerful smile back onto his face. Remus was always thin, but that is a train rail wearing a t-shirt and ratty denims. The weight loss makes the old scars on Remus’s face stand out in sharp relief. “Get yourself inside, then out into the back garden for shenanigans. Besides, the house-elves think they’re feeding an army, even though it’s just us.”

Remus smiles at the blatant hint. “I can probably help you put a dent into that.”

“That’s why we invited you,” James says dryly. Sirius hasn’t let go of James’s arm, but it suddenly feels more like a panicked clutch. “You might want to watch out for Lily, though.”

Remus rolls his eyes and walks past them. “I am perfectly capable of feeding myself. I’m off to find my godchild while you two wankers make out in the doorway.”

The result is loud and immediate. “Remus—” Lily begins to say, and then her greeting turns into a shriek. “SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW AND EAT SOMETHING, OR I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL FIND A FUNNEL!”

“My God,” James breathes, and Sirius’s hand tightens on his arm. “What the hell, Sirius?”

“Courting the werewolves, mostly,” Sirius replies in a low voice, his eyes now somber instead of shining. “But you know how the stubborn shit is about accepting charity.”

“Stubborn as shit,” James replies, and takes another look at his husband. “All right, talk. What’s wrong?”

Sirius’s eyes dart in the direction of the kitchen and the garden beyond it. “Remember the rumors of a traitor in the Order? They’ve gotten a lot worse this year.”

James stares at him. “If you tell me you think it’s Remus, I’m going to tell you that you’re fucking daft.”

“I don’t _know_ that it’s Remus,” Sirius retorts. “I don’t know that it isn’t, either! Hell, half of them are convinced that it’s me!”

James takes a moment to reflect on the idea of strangling a bunch of his fellow Order members. “And that’s exactly the point, Sirius. You don’t know that it is, or that it isn’t. Personally, I think you need to yank your head back out of your arse and remember who we are, all of us.” Oh, that is definitely wrong; that is definitely something from the new mental box politely knocking for his attention, but he can’t go digging right now.

Sirius takes a deep breath and lets it out in a shaky sigh. “We’re Marauders.”

“Yeah. All of us. And today, we’re going out into the back garden, we’ll celebrate our son’s first birthday, and forget about this damned war for a while. Got it?”

Sirius glances down. “I wasn’t…I wasn’t certain you’d still say that. Ours. I’ve only been by a few times since the Fidelius Charm went up last February, and what with the war—people change their minds, James.”

“Not us, you idiot.” James cuffs Sirius on the back of his head, which musses Sirius’s sleek, perfectly groomed curls of black hair. To finish making his point, he tries to figure out if it’s actually possible to stick his tongue down his husband’s throat.

“Ahem. Polite coughing, here.”

James and Sirius both turn their heads and look at the same time. Peter is waiting on the walk, in the same spot Remus vacated a couple of minutes ago. His clothes are as posh and ill-fitting as ever. “You lot have room for one more?”

James grins. “I’m not sure you’ll fit, Pete. Getting pretty crammed at the seams.”

“Good thing I can fit in your pocket then, isn’t it?” Peter smiles. “Sliced avocado and mustard, my word that we’re all who we say we are.”

“Sirius is pretty distinctive all on his own,” James says. “Come on, then. Get in here!”

Sirius and James follow Peter through the hall after James locks the front door, and the entire time, that box is yelling loudly for his attention. Following Peter, letting him in this house, trusting him, feels wrong.

Great. Now James is the one jumping at shadows.

No. The problem is that he _isn’t_. He just cannot, absolutely will not focus on that right now.

The back garden would definitely not meet with Gran’s approval any longer. The herb beds do all right, because Lily has brewed potions for too long, before and during the war, not to make James help her to keep it alive. Other things haven’t fared so well. James inherited his grandmother’s hair, not her green thumb. At least the lawn is still green, the furniture isn’t rusting, and Harry is toddling around in circles for…baby reasons, he supposes.

“He’s gigantic,” Sirius says bluntly.

“Please don’t confuse our son with Hagrid. I don’t think Hagrid would ever be the same ever again.” James grins when Sirius laughs. It doesn’t last long enough, but it’s better than that too-somber unhappiness.

“Good Lord. Look at that cake!” Peter exclaims.

“I know!” Lily gestures at the cake in frustration. “I told them a _small_ cake. Small!”

“Pretty sure that is small, at least to a house-elf,” Sirius says. “They probably wept while they made it, Lily. It’s not twice Harry’s height.”

“That’s appalling. This is…” Lily points at the three-tiered cake sitting on their patio table. “How are we going to eat all of this?”

“Give me a fork and get out of my way,” Remus suggests.

“Oi, you!” Peter elbows Remus in the side. “You wait your turn. I saw it first!”

Dragon jumps onto the table and sniffs at a rosette. “No. You really don’t want to eat that,” Lily tells her cat. She’s meant to be their cat, now, but Dragon refuses to read the memo. “You’ll be vomiting it up in the bushes if you do.”

The tortoiseshell cat looks offended and sits down next to the cake, tail swishing. “You are so spoiled,” James tells her. Dragon gives him a baleful glare and then jumps down in order to chase Harry into the taller grass at the rear of the garden. Harry loves it when Dragon decides it’s time to play tag, though usually it’s the two of them rushing back and forth in the hallway of the house, not outside.

The word “present” is enough for Harry to leave off with the cat and come toddling over to the table. Then he sees Sirius, abandons his beeline for shiny wrapped packages, and goes straight to his other father.

Sirius grins and holds out his hands. Harry giggles and dives right into Sirius’s arms. “Fa!” Harry yells.

“Yeah, that’s me turning into a puddle,” Sirius says. “How’s the vibe, little man?”

“Fa!” Harry repeats with a little brow wrinkle. He must not be done with greetings.

“Better Fa than Fu, I suppose,” Remus teases.

“And whose fault would that be?” Lily asks tartly.

“Not mine!” Remus protests. James laughs with the others, and it sounds…off. A harmony that isn’t harmonizing anymore. Peter is twitchy, even for a rat Animagus. Sirius is trying really hard to forget the traitor rumors, but considering how many battles and deaths the last year has treated them to, James can’t find it in his heart to blame him for struggling. Lily’s smile isn’t forced, but when she isn’t smiling, her expression is pinched with worry. Remus is the only one of them who doesn’t seem any different, except for the bit where he looks like a poster boy for a British famine.

 _This war has changed us so much,_ James thinks. Like so many similar thoughts he’s had of late, he puts it aside. “Presents before food and cake?”

“Considering Harry has been staring at that cake and probably won’t have tea just on general birthday principle?” Lily shakes her head, amused. “Presents first. He’ll have something to focus on so the rest of us can eat everything _else_ the elves crammed into the refrigerator overnight!”

“How about that chicken salad, Lily?” Remus teases. Lily flips him off with two fingers, and Sirius snorts out a laugh. Harry is still perched in Sirius’s lap, content and babbling on occasion. His free hand occasionally reaches in the direction of that massive bloody cake, but his other hand is wrapped around Sirius’s left fingers.

Peter brought Harry a little wooden dragon model that will fly around the room. “What with him and not sleeping, I thought, why not give him something to look at?” he shrugs when asked.

“It’s perfect,” James says, because it really is a thoughtful gift for a baby insomniac. “Thanks, Pete.”

Peter flushes dark red. “Yeah, uh—you’re welcome.”

Lily and James give Harry a stuffed black dog, sized just right for baby hands to grip, that looks like a very specific black Newfoundland. Even the plush toy’s eyes are grey. She found the right materials that would stand up to a permanent change, and James did the Transfiguration. “There. Now you can have Dad Two around all the time, sweetie.”

Harry pats the new stuffed dog, his smile sweet and happy. “Fa!” Then, very carefully, he says, “Pa’fut!”

“And now we’re up to six words. Seven, if you count Fa as a word.” James is proud of him, anyway. Remus is bloody well tearing up.

“He called me Padfoot.” Sirius’s lower lip trembles. James is torn between hugging him and rolling his eyes. “And I know he’s trying to say Father, but I didn’t want to go that way,” he whinges. “Reminds me of my father, and he was a wanker. Pop? Poppa? Papa? Dad Two is still really appealing, champ.”

Harry seems to be thinking that over while eyeing the last package left on the table. James is suspicious of that package’s contents, but it’s what he would’ve done, too. “Daddu!”

“Close enough, buddy,” Sirius whispers, and hugs their son until Harry starts to squirm with impatience. “I got you something. Your dad will love it. Your mum will probably want to pin my hide to the wall, but that’s the price we’ve gotta pay.”

“It’s a broom.” Lily rests her face in both hands for a moment once Harry has, with devoted help, torn the wrapping away. “Our son is barely walking, and you bought him a broom.”

“Boom!” Harry exclaims in delight. “Boom, boom, boom!”

“I bought him a _safe_ broom,” Sirius emphasizes while James picks it up, looking it over. Peter and Remus are behind him, peering over each of his shoulders. It feels surprisingly like school again, preparing for a Quidditch match the next day by looking over his broom the evening before.

“How is a broom safe?” Lily asks in dismay.

“Because this one will only hover as far above the ground as the little one can still reach with his toes,” Sirius replies. “It’s more like an unmoored fairground ride, really. It’s a teaching toy, not a rocket.”

Lily gives up. “Fine. Harry is already trying to grab it, anyway.”

From Remus, it’s a book. “My copy of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_.” He solemnly places it into Harry’s hands, a temporary distraction from the lure of a broom. Harry looks enthralled by the book, which is at least one hundred years old, bound in aged, dark leather, and is nothing like the colorful picture books that litter the nursery.

“First it belonged to my father, and before that, his grandfather.” Remus pats Harry on the head. “Keep that safe for me.”

Harry pats the book and then looks up at his godfather. “Yep.”

“You’re just full of words today, aren’t you, champ?” James asks, grinning at his son. “Someone Summon the camera. You don’t put a kid on his first broom and not take pictures!”

The birthday party ends a little after four, when Harry puts his head down next to the pathetic wreckage of a birthday cake and goes right to sleep. He spent a solid hour on his new broom, baby-cackling with delight as the others took turns chasing him. Dragon decided she was too good to chase a broom and instead hopped up on the end, nesting in the twigs right behind Harry.

Peter doesn’t. Much like the Animagus bit, Lily doesn’t push when Peter declines a chance to chase after a baby on a broomstick. James thinks that what’s left of Peter’s family is kind of screwed if their only remaining Heir has decided that babies are scary.

Lily leans over and plants a kiss on Sirius’s lips before she gathers up their snoring, sugar-laden child. “I’m cleaning him off and putting this one down for a nap. Bedtime was really not-time last night. The rest of you, behave yourselves,” she orders, and takes Harry into the house.

James gets Remus to help him pack up most of the food in the fridge to send along with him. “Seriously, the house-elves are burying us, and we can’t eat it all before they’ll be cramming this refrigerator full again! You’re doing us a favor.”

Remus gives up on protesting, but he’s still sulking. “All right. But don’t think I don’t know what you’re about.”

“I know exactly what I’m about,” James replies. “There are, uh….there are good Preservation Charms on everything. It’ll last for a while.”

Remus glances at him. “James, I can—”

“Do not give me any shit right now,” James snaps. “There is an insane Dark Lord after my kid, the Order and the M.L.E. are falling apart, and the Ministry is sodding _useless!_ My son’s godfather has to be alive after this war, and that’s you, Remus.”

Remus looks away, biting his lip. “So many of them think it’s me, James,” he whispers. “They think I’m the bloody traitor. Some days I think even Sirius—”

“No. Stop.” James gets his hands onto Remus’s tall shoulders and turns him around. “Look at me.” He waits until Remus meets his eyes. “We are Marauders first, all of us. Do you know what that means? You and Pete were the brothers I never had. Sirius too. Now that just sounds incestuous, but he’s a Black, so who cares?” Remus makes a vague, amused sort of noise; James dubs it a good sign and plows on. “It’s you three and me, and me for you three, always. War isn’t going to change that. If Sirius ever believes you’d turn against us, there will come a day when he knows he’s wrong, and he’ll apologize to you. If you ever believe Sirius has betrayed us, then one day, he’ll get that same sort of apology from you. But: I firmly believe that if there is a traitor, it won’t be him, and it won’t be you.”

Remus doesn’t look entirely convinced, but at least he’s no longer slumping in a way that makes him look six inches shorter. “Yeah. Okay.”

“What about me, then?” Peter asks as they finish packing and shrinking the leftovers.

James turns and gives him a serious look. “You’re my brother, Pete. No way.” That boxed-up part of his thoughts hisses in angry pleasure when Peter flinches. It’s so slight that Remus doesn’t notice…but James does.

Lily sees Remus to the door, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek before sending him off. “You be careful. We need you in one piece, not several dozen of them.” Remus gives her a brief smile, waves, and then Disapparates on the front walk the moment he’s cleared the wards.

After Lily goes upstairs to check on Harry again, Peter is the next to show himself out. Then he does something surprising. “I’ll be back in the morning to reset the Fidelius Charm to a new Secret Keeper’s phrase.”

James halts mid-step. “Morning?” he repeats stupidly.

“Well, yeah. Sirius…he misses you guys.” Peter shuffles his feet, abashed. Sirius tries to glare at Peter and blush at the same time. “I don’t think it’s right, a married man only seeing his family once in a year. I told him he’d better take the opportunity now, because Merlin knows when we’ll get another one.”

“Right.” James claps Peter on the back. “You’re a good man, Pete.”

James doesn’t imagine the flicker of fear in Peter’s eyes, either. He pretends not to notice.

Peter shrugs. “Yeah, well. I’m trying, same as everyone else. See you in the morning, right?”

James sees Peter to the door, locks it behind him, and engages the extra warding that will keep someone from mucking about with the locks. Then he nearly jumps out of his skin when Sirius hugs him from behind. “They’ll be all right,” Sirius says, nuzzling into James’s neck. “We’re Marauders. We always finish what we started, and now, we’re doing it right.”

“Taking the lesson to heart, huh?” James asks, smiling.

“I’m stupid and stubborn, but eventually the message gets through.”

“Yeah.” James turns around in Sirius’s arms, relishing the feel of familiar strong arms around his waist. He loves Lily, and they’ve made do, but they’ve both missed Sirius so damned much. “Come on. If Harry is asleep, we really need to take advantage of that opportunity.”

Lily leans over the upstairs railing, completely naked, her red hair flowing like rippling fire. “No, you have to come take advantage of _me_ ,” she corrects them primly, and disappears into their bedroom.

Sirius stares after her. “Am I drooling? I think I’m drooling.”

“You do that anyway.” James ducks away from Sirius’s arm, laughing. This isn’t like that damned itchy box in his head. This just feels natural and right. “Come on. We’ve missed you. Now go upstairs and prepare to be spoiled.”

“That sounds like an excellent plan.” Sirius bounds up the stairs, but James finds himself following at a much slower pace.

Convincing Sirius that yes, James really did love Lily and Sirius both, had been an uphill battle. Lily was convinced about James and Sirius at once, saying that it explained _their entire childhood_ , but Sirius came from a family of paranoid nutters. The other uphill battle had been trying to explain triad relationships and marriages to Lily, who was raised to believe marriages between more than two people constituted bigamy. Once she looked up and saw proof of the long history of tri-marriages in wizarding culture, though, Lily was all for it.

James is not ashamed of the fact that he had to look up the word _bigamy_ in a Muggle dictionary. It was appalling to discover that the poor bastards have become so bloody stifled. Worse was the education on how dangerous it was to be out in London as a gay man, or a woman, or any flavor in-between. At least James and Sirius were still used to the idea of acting like friends instead of spouses.

“James Henry Potter, get your arse into this room!” Lily’s patience with his dawdling definitely over with.

“And present your naked backside!” Sirius yells.

James smiles. Their courtship moved along nicely when Sirius and Lily both realized they had a mutual love of ordering him about. “Harry, champ, I hope you take a nap for the ages.”


	37. (No) Sacrifice Without Betrayal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are you plotting, Lil?"
> 
> "You'll find out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much beta-flailing. <3 for @norcumii Also, at this point, so much author-flailing.
> 
> So, 6th January 2021. I've barely slept, mostly because I'm a natural insomniac and fury feeds it. There is so much I could say, but there is *so much.* I'll stick with this:
> 
> Never let anyone convince you that what happened in Washington, D.C. on 6th January 2021 was okay, just, fair, or reasonable. Never let anyone convince you that those vicious, violent people were the equivalent of Revolutionary War patriots. They weren't and they aren't. Their cause was not freedom; their cause was to take it away, in the name of fear, bigotry, racism, and hate.
> 
> In fact, if you can avoid it, don't even talk to those who would excuse what happened on Wednesday. They're not worth your time.

James wakes up to sunlight and a blurry ceiling. Somehow, they’re not in a tangle of limbs, but he’s also not sweating and overheated by a massive dog taking up far too much space. He Summons his glasses out of long habit and puts them on, grateful for the return of stark clarity to replace the blur.

Sirius didn’t shift into his Animagus form. He’s lying face-down between them, his hair mussed from sleep. From the sound of it, he might possibly be snoring. Sirius almost always turns Padfoot in the middle of the night; he just needs to be asleep, comfortable, and know that he’s _safe_.

James can’t really blame Sirius for not feeling entirely safe. Not with how fucked up everything has been.

One of Sirius’s arms is draped over James’s waist. The other is resting over Lily’s back. She’s contorted herself into an odd half-fetal twist, her head laying properly on the pillow while her stomach and legs are stretched out flat.

 _How?_ James once again wonders, smiling. Then he realizes it’s a good thing the three of them are parents in the habit of sleeping in pyjamas. Harry has already crawled into bed with them, sitting between James’s legs and contentedly waiting for his dads and mum to wake up.

“What time is it, champ?”

Harry hisses at him.

“Hiss o’clock. Got it,” James groans, and Harry giggles. “Don’t hiss at Dad Two, okay? Still a secret.”

Harry nods and then crawls over James’s legs so that he can claim Sirius’s back as his new territory. “Pa’fut!”

Sirius lifts his head, groggy and mostly still unconscious. “Why is there a brick on my back?”

“Our son says good morning,” James informs him.

“Oh.” Sirius flumps back down. “It’s too early to be morning.”

“The sun is shining, the birds are singing…well, probably there are birds singing somewhere…”

“Nooooo…” Sirius groans into his pillow. Harry giggles and claps his hands.

“Our son is our alarm clock, by the way,” James adds.

“Defective alarm clock. The alarm clock needs to go back to bed until it’s a reasonable time of day. Maybe noon,” Sirius mutters.

Harry looks at James and widens his eyes. James, recognizing the game, nods. Harry giggles again and claps his hands until Dragon jumps up onto the bed. She walks right onto Sirius’s head and settles down to knead and purr.

Sirius lets out another pathetic wail. “Noooooooooooooooo…”

Lily turns herself over and grins at Sirius’s misery. “Our alarm clock has devoted assistance.”

“Why doesn’t this cat hate me? I’m a dog Animagus. She should hate me!” Sirius whinges. Dragon purrs louder in response. “Ow, ow, ow! I’m getting up! Save those claws for Lily’s sister!”

Dragon slowly stands up, tail thrashing once, before she goes over to Harry and starts rubbing her head against his chin. She never seems to mind that Harry is still learning how to pat without smacking things.

Lily can’t bring herself to ask Harry not to fling his dry cereal onto the floor. James can’t, either, not when a big black Newfoundland is devotedly cleaning up after the baby. Harry is too happy, and Padfoot…well, he does make the resulting mess disappear.

Sirius changes back and drops into a chair once Harry has decided he’s done with the tossing. “I’m glad I know this floor is clean.”

“Please; you’d do that for Harry even if we were outside on the patio of a restaurant in Central London,” Lily counters.

“No, that would _really_ depend on the restaurant.” Sirius is still smiling, but James knows when Sirius is upset. He’s always had expressive eyes. “Do you have any idea how much I want to tell the Order to bugger off and stay here with you?”

James opens his mouth, ready to tell Sirius to go ahead and do just that, when he feels like someone with a very large hand just slapped him in the back of the head. Instead of words, he coughs out juice and tries not to feel like he’s going to choke on orange pulp.

“Pretty sure you still can’t breathe orange juice,” Sirius observes, but he looks concerned.

James waves him off. “Fine, s’fine. Wrong way down, is all.” He sops up the sprayed mess, then his face, still coughing and wondering what the actual _hell_ just happened.

Lily takes over after throwing a napkin at James’s face. “We’ve got a pretty good idea, Sirius. We want you here, too.”

“And I can’t. Not if I’m trying to be a responsible adult.” Sirius sighs and gives Harry his left hand to grip when Harry babbles upset and calls for Padfoot. “Besides, it would kind of ruin the Secret Keeper illusion, people would wonder why I stayed, someone might actually start digging into the Ministry’s records…I hope this war ends soon. This is bloody awful.”

“Maybe you should visit,” Lily suggests, though James wonders why she looks briefly surprised after saying that. “Before Hallowe’en.”

“Maybe.” Sirius glances at Harry and pulls off a partial Animagus transformation, leaving Harry holding a doggy paw instead of a hand. Harry coos in delight and starts petting dog fur. “You really aren’t fazed by much of anything, are you, kiddo?”

James smiles and exchanges glances with Lily. “Not much.”

“Even if I can’t get away before, I’ll be here on Hallowe’en,” Sirius says. That box in James’s head, the one he’d managed to forget about overnight, tries to rip itself apart.

“No. No, you can’t,” James whispers. “Sirius, if something really does go wrong, Harry needs you.”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Sirius insists, shifting his hand back to human. “But I doubt I’ll get Pete to agree to another visit unless it’s Christmas if the war is still on.”

James tries not to glare at Sirius. It’s not Sirius’s fault that Peter never really _got_ that James isn’t straight-up Protestant. “Remind the little rat that Diwali is a thing, and it’s important, will you?”

Sirius raises both eyebrows. “Right, yeah! He’d have a hell of a time arguing with that one unless he wanted to look like a horse’s ar—er, backside,” he amends quickly, realizing that Harry is staring at him. “Sorry, nearly used a naughty word. Don’t repeat that one, kiddo. Anyway, when is it this year? My Hindu calendar is you, darling other third.”

James laughs at the reminder of how they’d subverted the saying _my other half_. “It’s twenty-seventh October this year. Dusk.”

The box in James’s head is quietly surprised that James wasn’t slapped again. James really needs to find out what the hell is in that box, but not until after Sirius has gone.

“August, September, most of October.” Sirius looks at Lily, who is biting her lip. “That’s not near as bad as this last gap. We can make it.”

Lily nods, her eyes overbright with unshed tears. “Yes. Yes, we can, and we will.”

* * * *

Seeing Sirius off is always a process that involves a lot of hugs and snogging. Lily chastises them to hurry up and get Sirius out the door already, but she’s just as bad about reclaiming him, and then the cycle starts over again.

When Sirius is finally gone, the door shut behind him, Lily and James watch from the parlor window. Sirius doesn’t Disapparate from the walkway, but keeps going. “Bike,” James realizes, and is proven right about a minute later when he hears the engine start up. “That’s how he got here first, I guess.”

“You still want one, don’t you?” Lily asks in an amused tone.

“Yeah. Maybe after the war,” James says, and then feels like that was a stupid thing to say. “Should I open that box now, or wait for Pete to turn up?”

“He’ll be here in a few minutes. Now would be best.” Lily tightens her grip on James’s hand.

James kicks the box open, letting everything flood back into place. Then he nearly sicks up on the parlor rug. “Oh. Where’s Harry?”

“Sitting on the back step with Dragon.”

“Good. Oh, _fuck_ , Lily,” James gasps. “I wouldn’t have been able to pull that off yesterday if I hadn’t done that. I feel like our house has been violated, and—did you notice?” he realizes. “Peter didn’t touch Harry. Not once.”

“No, he didn’t.” Lily presses her face into James’s shoulder. “I need to learn Occlumency and Legilimency, James. If Peter had touched Harry, I doubt being swatted by magic would’ve stopped me.”

“Right. That’s what that was.” James rubs the back of his head, which still feels sort of tingly and bruised. “And Sal takes that kind of wallop to the chest. I wonder how often he wanders around with bruises. That bloody hurt!”

“You just about went cross-eyed,” Lily says. “Occlumency and Legilimency?”

“Yeah, I can show you the rest of the Occlumency lessons, and…well, actually I don’t know if I can teach Legilimency, but I can try.”

“Good enough. Do you trust me, James?” Lily asks.

James glances down at her, but she’s still hiding her face from him. All he sees is the flowing fire of her hair. “You know I do. Are you plotting, Lil?”

“You’ll find out.”

When Peter arrives, it’s Lily who greets him at the door. James has to stand out of sight in the hall bathroom, jaw clenched and hands balled up into fists. He can pull himself together long enough for the Fidelius Charm to be reset. He can. He has to.

He steps out into the hallway, visible from the front door. Peter is shrugging off his robes. Lily is standing behind him, an expression of pure loathing on her face. It reminds James of Snape, but if so, then she definitely learned that sort of snarl from the best.

James doesn’t have to fake the exhausted expression on his face. “Hey, Pete.”

Peter nods, a bit jerkily, and smiles back. “Hello. I hope things went…you know.”

“Yeah.” James nods. “They went.”

Then Lily lifts her wand, points it at Peter, and whispers, “ _Imperio_.”

“Shit, Lily!” James yelps as Peter’s features go slack and biddable.

Lily raises an eyebrow at him, a dry commentary on James’s squawking and a question needing an answer. James thinks about it before he nods.

“Peter. Roll up your left sleeve, please. Bare your left arm,” Lily orders.

James will give him this; Peter’s will is pretty strong. It always has been. “I’m not supposed to do that,” Peter says in a monotone.

“It’s a special occasion,” Lily says. “Go ahead and roll up your left sleeve. Do it.”

Peter’s hand twitches a few times, as if he’s trying to stop. Then he starts pulling back his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt sleeve cuff.

The Dark Mark always looks like an ugly bruise when it’s found on someone’s skin. The skull and the snake are unmistakable.

James has to swallow before asking, “Why’d you get that, Peter?” Then Lily has to repeat the question, because Peter is still fighting the curse. He isn’t going to answer anyone but the person who cast the spell.

Peter responds as if the answer is obvious. “Because the Dark Lord is going to win the war.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Lily asks, emerald eyes all but glowing to reflect her fury.

“He will.” Peter sounds confident, casual. He was the only Marauder aside from Remus who sometimes got away with whatever nonsense they’d pulled at Hogwarts. Remus almost always got off as long as he wasn’t anywhere near the other Marauders, or the mischief’s fallout. “Once the danger of the prophecy is gone, nothing will stop the Dark Lord. After that, it’s the Ministry, and the Wizengamot is already his. Everything’s pretty much done after that, isn’t it?”

James shakes his head and gestures at Lily. “I can’t. I just—I can’t hear any more of this.”

“You can unroll your sleeve now, Peter.” Lily waits until Peter has buttoned his shirt cuff and resettled his clothes, then whispers, “ _Obliviate_.” Peter now looks Confounded as well as biddable. “James.”

Sal is right. Peter’s Occlumency barriers are such complete shit. James could have read him yesterday if he hadn’t boxed everything up in order to keep things leaning towards normal. It doesn’t take long to embed the few instructions needed for Peter to carry on as normal after Lily lifts the Imperius Curse.

A few details are missing from Peter entering the house because of the Obliviation. James connects those blank spots with a more prominent memory of Peter getting completely fucking pissed last night in—Merlin. That’s Cornelius Yaxley, both of them drinking up after a Goddamned Death Eater meeting. James didn’t even know the Yaxley patriarch was a Death Eater.

James feels ill just being in Peter’s head, because Sal was right. Hell, James thinks maybe Sal was sugarcoating it when he told them about Peter. James is in the midst of this slimy mess, and he still doesn’t know if Peter jumped ship out of fear, or if the war yanked some previously dormant character flaw to the surface, one that’s always been there. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. This man isn’t James’s friend anymore. The Peter Pettigrew who James grew up with might as well be dead.

He gets out of Peter’s thoughts and then dries his face. It’s like confronting that betrayal all over again, this time with the evidence stamped on Peter’s arm, admitted by his own traitorous mouth. “We’re clear, Lily. Get ready.”

Lily and James split up, their wands raised and waiting in the parlor and kitchen, respectively, as Peter blinks a few times and comes back to himself. “I don’t understand why this is even necessary,” Lily says in an aggravated tone. If she had been a part of the Marauders from the beginning, the staff of Hogwarts would’ve stood no bloody chance.

Peter seems baffled for a moment, realizes he’s already standing in his usual spot in the hall, and belatedly retrieves his wand. “We all know Sirius and Remus aren’t spies, but you can’t be too careful when there’s a war on! Ready, now: one…two…”

On three, they act in tandem to dismiss the current Fidelius Charm. James feels the change around them and tries not to grit his teeth. It always takes a few precious seconds to cast the new charm to take its place. Changing the Secret Keeper’s phrase is more difficult than just resetting the stupid charm, and if you do it wrong, the Fidelius Charm will fall apart, anyway.

“Right, you’re up, make it fast, James!” Peter calls.

“The secret keeper sustains their loyalty by these words: _duśamaṇa sahiyōgī nahīṁ hana_ ,”[1] James murmurs. Let that pretentious prick Voldemort deal with some Punjabi for a change.

“ _Duśamaṇa sahiyōgī nahīṁ hana_ ,” Peter repeats. He’s always been good at mimicking, too, even if he never bothered to learn Punjabi. “As Keeper of this Secret, those words are mine alone to grant to another, and never an enemy it shall be.”

 _You fucking liar,_ James thinks, but his anger has dried up and left a miserable pile of tired behind. It doesn’t even matter that Peter is lying. The Fidelius Charm won’t shatter until the actual betrayal occurs.

Lily is staring out of the parlor window, narrow-eyed. “Three Death Eaters across the street.”

“Always nice to find that the enemy knows where you live,” James drawls. “If they knew when the Fidelius came down, someone must be watching the house.”

“Can’t be, not all the time,” Peter refutes, fiddling with his wand for a moment before shoving it back into his sleeve. “Or yesterday could’ve been a disaster.”

“You’re probably right,” James says. Peter would have told them not to be there. Can’t rouse suspicion, after all.

James takes his own look at the Death Eaters across the street. They’re not stupid enough to wear the cloaks and masks, but they’re completely hopeless about dressing to blend in. They look like they belong in a Muggle medieval festival, and they’re earning stares from passersby to prove it. “The moment the Fidelius Charm fails, they’ll be rushing the house.”

“It’s not going to fail.” Peter even sounds like he means it, which makes James clench his jaw. “I’ll leave by way of the back garden. I can Apparate back to London from there.”

“See you, Pete.” James waves to send him off. Once he’s outside, Peter gives them a brief smile before Disapparating.

“Did you make certain he’ll let Sirius come here for Diwali?” Lily asks as she picks Harry up from grass. He’s been meticulously piling pebbles filched from the flowerbed and stacking them into miniature towers.

“Yeah. It’s in Peter’s head. Didn’t even get slapped for it.” James swallows down the lump in his throat. “What do we do?”

“Spend time with Harry,” Lily answers, smiling at their son. “Wait for the others to turn up next Friday. Figure out if there is any other way to prepare for this mess when we don’t even know the entire plan.”

“Full schedule,” James says, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets. “I guess we’d better get started.”

“Yeah,” Lily agrees, but neither of them rushes off to start doing…whatever it is they’re going to do aside from take care of Harry. “What did you tell Peter for the Secret Keeper’s phrase?”

James glances at the damp patch of grass that’s still holding onto the imprint of Peter’s last footsteps. “I said, ‘Enemies are not allies.’”

* * * *

Lily knows she’s probably driving James mental with her pacing through the house, but she can’t help it. A bit of it is guilt; she dosed Harry with a baby-sized sip of Dreamless Sleep so he (might) sleep through the night. She’ll settle for Harry sleeping through this meeting. Even knowing she didn’t do anything wrong—that she is keeping him _safe_ —doesn’t make her feel less guilty about it.

Faking her death, letting Harry believe his parents were murdered for over fourteen years, is another reason for pacing, and for guilt. It’s for the right reasons, and she knows it, saw it for herself, knows it’s Harry’s life and future at stake if they botch it…but she’ll still be lying to her son for his entire childhood. She’ll be letting bloody _Petunia_ raise her baby, and that adds a healthy dose of self-loathing for good measure.

For about five seconds, Lily thought about asking Salazar if she and James could just take Vernon and Petunia Dursley’s places for that entire time. Then she realized it would be _them_ giving Harry that awful childhood.

That brought about the vomiting she hadn’t indulged in early morning on Harry’s birthday.

Midnight on Friday passes, and Lily tries not to panic. She glances at her wristwatch every thirty seconds until, finally, someone pounds on the front door. Even expecting the knock, Lily still jumps and lets out an embarrassing little squeak.

James, standing against the wall between the front door and the parlor window, looks like the knock rattled him just as much. “Go,” he mouths, holding up his wand, and Lily nods. Showtime. Or killing people time. She really hopes it isn’t the latter. She’ll do it to protect her family and not regret it, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it.

Lily pulls open the little glass window in their front door while biting her lip. She doesn’t want to be hexed, cursed, or murdered through the spelled window. No Shield Charm on this planet will hold up if someone tries to aim the Killing Curse through this portal.

They used to open the door without checking first, confident in the Fidelius Charm, knowing it could only be Peter or Sirius. Never again. Never that careless. Not with their lives, and not with Harry.

“It’s a bit late for midnight salesmen.” Lily squints, trying to make out shapes in the darkness. This is why she argued with James about getting the light for the front step fixed, but they’d both been stuck behind the Fidelius Charm. She tried to tell Peter about light bulbs so he would go buy one to replace it, and he’d just looked so increasingly confused that she gave up.

“ _Duśamaṇa sahiyōgī nahīṁ hana_ ,” an unfamiliar voice gasps out. It could be Sal, given the way he uses Polyjuice, but maybe not. “Enemies are not allies, now _please_ let us in. Still just three of us, per the plan, but Saul needs help.”

James is already nodding when Lily yanks the door open. Then she points her wand in the surprised face of Quintinus Hobart.

“Merlin, woman, I might be Polyjuiced, but that’s still my eye you’re trying to poke out!” the man exclaims. “You were training as a healer, right?”

No, that is definitely not Quintinus Hobart, even though he’s wearing black Death Eater robes. Lily has had the displeasure of meeting Hobart, and this man isn’t acting like a lazy, pretentious wanker who is also perpetually stoned. Hobart also wouldn’t be the type to support a wounded man. One of Salazar’s arms is slung over Not-Hobart’s shoulder, gripped by Not-Hobart’s hand, and he’s being supported at the waist, but—no, Salazar is definitely not conscious, not the way his head is lolling. Whatever went wrong this evening, Salazar didn’t have time to strip off those distinctive black Death Eater robes, either.

“I think he passed out during the last Apparition,” Not-Quintinus says. “Or maybe during the first one, I don’t know. We were in a hurry. Are we standing on your front doorstep all night, or what?”

Lily steps aside, using her wand to point at the parlor. “Sofa. Now. We don’t have a bedroom downstairs, so it’ll have to do.”

“Got it. Thank you, Lily.” Not-Hobart half-carries, half-drags Salazar into the house. Behind them waits another, shorter Death Eater. This one not only still robed, but wearing one of those damned silver masks.

They’re also holding out their wand, handle first. “I know that Saul makes a rather obvious case, but this is war. Take no chances.”

Lily nods and grabs the other Death Eater’s wand. The voice is female and sounds familiar, but she could say that about a lot of witches now. “Come inside. If either of you hurt my family, I’ll kill you.”

She gets the feeling the probably-not Death Eater finds that amusing. “That is the opposite of our intent.”

Allies, Lily reminds herself. They have the phrase, they have Salazar, and the Fidelius Charm is still intact. Allies. Not the enemy.

“What the hell happened to Sal?” James asks, nearly startling Not-Hobart into dropping Salazar.

“Please don’t _do_ that!” Not-Hobart yelps. “I’ve already died once this decade, and I’d like to reserve my next death for the 1990s, or maybe my second century.”

James nods, lowering his wand. “Sorry. I’m not going to vaporize you, but what the _hell_ happened?”

“It was the Cruciatus Curse, wasn’t it?” Lily thinks Salazar would be dead if she didn’t already know he couldn’t die. His breaths are faint, liquid-sounding gasps of air, and his fingers are either dislocated or broken.

“Yes,” the female Death Eater-dressed ally says. “Too much of it.”

James helps Not-Hobart to place Salazar on their parlor sofa. James finds all of the parlor cushions, handing them over so that Not-Hobart can stuff them behind Salazar’s head and upper back to make breathing easier. Lily casts the diagnostic charm she learned from Elizabetha and Euphemia. It’s an East-West blend of magic that is the absolute best for seeing the true depth of Cruciatus Curse damage.

Lily hisses in a breath, shocked by how badly Salazar is injured. “Was someone trying to kill him?” she asks in disbelief.

“Of course they were trying to kill him. More accurately, the Dark Lord believed he was torturing Alex Theodore Fawley for a perceived failing that none of us knew about in advance.”

Lily turns her head and finds herself gazing at Jewel Talbot Burke’s unmasked, lightly lined aristocratic features. Her blue eyes are exactly the same, but her brown hair has threads of silver running through it that Madam Burke is making no attempt to disguise. “Alex Fawley is a Death Eater,” Lily says. “Why would You-Know-Who want him dead?”

“Wasn’t Fawley married to Selene Crouch?” James asks, because Lily’s husband has a Pure-blood genealogy guide living in his head. “She died a while ago, didn’t she?”

“Yes, yes, and I’ve no idea what Fawley did to anger the Dark Lord.” Madam Burke continues to divest herself of Death Eater regalia, removing the heavy black robes to reveal a richly embroidered black shirt and skirt beneath. She prefers an era of dress similar to the one Professor McGonagall likes, and pulls it off just as well. “Fawley might literally have done nothing, but it still incited the Dark Lord to torture him to the point of death. The Dark Lord’s temper is…mercurial, of late.”

Not-Hobart snorts. “That’s like saying my cousin is only a little bit mad. The Dark Lord fully expects that Alex Fawley crawled out of his presence tonight in order to find a convenient ditch in which to politely expire. Jewel, this is not really going to plan.”

“No, it isn’t.” Madam Burke offers Not-Hobart a faint smirk. “But we are in the Potters’ presence, and we’re not yet dead. I’d like to keep it that way, which is why I handed over my wand. We’re not yet vouched for, Robert.”

“Look, it isn’t as if they didn’t hear the bloody Secret Keeper’s phrase already—no.” Robert puts his hands over his face and makes himself breathe. Lily finds herself sympathizing with whoever is lurking beneath that Polyjuice disguise. The idea of spying on Voldemort makes her feel panicked, too.

“All right. Better,” Robert says. “I apologize; I’ve been panicking ever since I realized that Saul’s Polyjuice might wear off before the Dark Lord was done with him.” He retrieves two different wands from his sleeves and gives them to James, whose eyebrows climb in surprise before he shoves both wands into a robe pocket. Neither of them really bother with robes of late, but wearing charm-laden battle robes tonight seemed like the safer idea.

Lily returns her attention to her floating diagnostic charm, thinking on everything she’ll need to retrieve from her crude laboratory downstairs. Potions will be much faster than magic for healing most of this disaster, and she’s never stopped brewing them. They’re useful during a war, and healing potions are so often needed that Lily can probably brew all of the standard types in her sleep by now. After they went into hiding, brewing pregnancy-safe potions was a way to stave off waves of intense, mind-numbing _boredom_ until Harry was born. The moment Harry was old enough to use his Muggle-made bouncing chair, he started watching Lily brew, jumping and babbling at Mum from behind the safety of a solid Shield Charm.

Madam Burke eyes Lily’s fading diagnostic charm. “A wand would be best for healing some of those long fractures in his legs. I doubt Skele-Gro will be necessary, though.”

“Healer-trained?” Lily asks, curious. She’d made that same decision about Skele-Gro already, but it’s nice to have a second opinion.

Madam Burke inclines her head. “Midwifery, but yes.”

Lily glances at Salazar again, biting her lip. Salazar’s bronze skin is washed out, pale and grey, bruise-jaundiced and violet-smeared. There is blood at his eyes, nose, mouth, and maybe his ears, too, but it’s hard to tell when there is so much of it.

“Wait here, all of you. I’m fetching the potions I need to put the man bleeding all over my sofa back together. Nobody kill each other.” Lily runs for the kitchen, yanking open the basement door the moment the charms on the doorknob recognize her hand. She takes the basement stairs quickly enough to nearly slide down the bottom three.

Lily owned two cauldrons, pewter and bronze, before marrying James and Sirius. Then Elizabetha started sharing her laboratory with Lily, giving her access to silver, brass, ancient cast iron, copper, a single precious cauldron hammered from pure gold, and the ultimate rarity among brewers: a platinum cauldron no larger than a salad bowl.

She hates that she inherited all of them, but was still very glad that Salazar insisted that James remove them from Potter Manor before the Death Fidelius activated. Some potions require those rarities, and just to ensure she could still do it, Lily brewed one of them this week. Elizabetha taught her how to brew an Eastern cure for curse damage, one that begins life in a silver cauldron, is reduced in bronze, and then reduced again in the small platinum cauldron.

Mediwizards from St. Mungo’s laughed at Lily when she told them that curse damage lingers. Elizabetha had rolled her eyes when Lily told her about that afterwards explaining that they’d once laughed at her, too. Bloody British wizarding _idiots_.

It does make her wonder about what certain Pensieve memories implied about Occlumency, and how it refines magical talent. Lily never once thought she had a single spark of Divinatory talent, and what did she choose to brew this week? Elizabetha’s curse-removing potion.

“I’ll have to brew this one again,” Lily mutters to herself, grabbing the phial with its silver-painted glass top. She adds a nerve-soothing potion, pain-killing draughts, blood replenisher, a bone-mender meant to assist the healing process, not take over entirely, an anti-nausea potion, and two different restoratives.

Upstairs, she shuts the basement door so Harry can’t find his way to the laboratory by falling down the stairs. Then she hurries back to the parlor. It’s far too quiet, full of tense, silent people, which makes it easy to hear Salazar’s wet-sounding breaths that speak of broken ribs and punctured lungs. Lily kneels down beside Robert, who is wiping the blood from Salazar’s face with a damp handkerchief from James’s own pocket.

“Pain-killers, nerve-soothing, bone-mending, restoratives…and one mystery potion that I would imagine Slughorn doesn’t know about,” Robert identifies them.

Lily isn’t ready to give up information on that one yet, not until she finds out who she’s dealing with beneath the stupid Polyjuice. “I was tempted to add the one Severus designed. He used to call it, ‘Fuck this, but I have to pretend to be a functional person so I don’t kill everyone today.’ I always told him it needed a shorter name, but ‘Fuck This’ wasn’t a great alternative.”

Robert lets out a short, bitter laugh. “Yes, that sounds like Severus.”

“Tolerantu,” Salazar mutters.

“What’s that?” Lily asks, wondering how Salazar managed actual consciousness.

“S’what he named it. Tolerantu. Tolerance.” Salazar says, his eyes cracking open just enough to reveal a hint of hazel green. “Gods, how many potions are you going to make me drink?”

“All of them,” Lily says flatly. She attended the bedsides of too many wounded wizards and witches from July 1978 until February 1980. She knows what needs to be done, how to do it, and how to deal with stubborn arseholes. “Cooperate, or I’ll _make_ you drink them.”

Salazar’s eyes flicker from the potions down to his injured hands. “Useless threat. Couldn’t hold a feather right now. You’ll have to do that, anyway.” Then he starts laughing, even if it quickly turns into pained gasping. “So that’s where—where he gets it from.”

“Who and what?” Lily asks, placing the potions in a row on the floor in the order she thinks will work best. The first pain-killing potion should definitely start them off.

“My brother. Healer trained, and a complete bastard about it if he thinks you deserved it.”

Lily hesitates. She knows that wasn’t intentional, but it still reminded her of who this man is, and exactly what he’s gone through while helping them to fight a war against Voldemort. “There’s always the Banishing trick.”

Salazar thinks on it for a moment. “As long as there is an anti-nausea potion in that collection, and no glass involved…”

Lily and Robert both wince. “That would be—well, you probably know, and never mind, because you’re unconscious again.” Robert sighs when Salazar’s eyes close. “Banishing trick it is, then, but I don’t trust my aim right now. Or my ability not to accidentally send the glass along with the potion.”

“I do not actually know this ‘trick,’” Madam Burke says as Lily lifts her wand. “May I watch?”

Lily glances up at her and finds only polite curiosity. “Yes. Just don’t interrupt me once I’ve started.” Banishing the contents of a potions phial directly into someone else’s stomach isn’t exactly easy, but Lily always excelled at Charms. Filius taught her this one himself during Hogwarts’ winter holidays in 1979, just after Lily discovered she was pregnant.

She has to use the charm for each individual potion, not all at once, saving the anti-nausea potion for last. The only one she doesn’t use the charm for is Elizabetha’s potion for curse damage removal. She has no idea if it would be affected by a charm, and doesn’t want to risk finding out. By the time Salazar wakes up, he’ll be able to drink it himself.

Lily has just finished Banishing the empty phials to the kitchen for washing when Robert exclaims, “Finally!” She glances over to see that the Polyjuice is wearing off. “I’m glad I wore loose clothing tonight. How does anyone stand being that short?”

“Oh, God,” Lily whispers as Robert gains at least five inches of height, long black hair, and dark green eyes that never reflect inner fire, not the way hers do. “Regulus.”

“I thought maybe it was, because of your wand, but…” James hesitates before he retrieves both of the wands Regulus was carrying and hands them over. “Sirius is going to lose his mind. He thought you were dead—it was fucking devastating, Regulus!”

Regulus Black pauses in the middle of tying back his hair. “Amy said something similar, but I still thought Sirius would be glad to be rid of the rubbish, to be honest.”

“Oh, for—” Lily shakes her head as she gives Jewel Burke her wand back. Regulus is all the confirmation she needs, and she’s had enough of being afraid. “I’ll slap you in the head for saying something that stupid, but later.”

Madam Burke raises an eyebrow as she tucks her wand away. “Robert will certainly have earned it.”

“Look, I’m already going to be hit in the face with a brick in 1995, if I live that long. Isn’t that good enough?” Regulus asks Jewel.

Lily makes a sound even she doesn’t know how to translate. That year is _not_ a coincidence. “A brick?”

“Er…yeah. A certain portrait warned me that joining up with a megalomaniac had consequences, and if he ever figured out how to remove himself from a painting and discovered I’d been that stupid, he’d hit me with a brick.” Regulus puts his wand away, one that Lily can now recognize even if she didn’t see it up close very often. The other wand, likely belonging to Quintinus Hobart, is dropped on the closest chair, followed by a Death Eater’s cloak.

James shakes his head and flicks his wand, sending Robert’s Death Eater disguise to live in a pile by the front door. “Please don’t contaminate my furniture with that shite if you can help it.”

Lily has to make herself turn away. She can ask Regulus about a certain portrait in the Slytherin Common Room later. These fractures won’t heal themselves, and she wants it done while Salazar is too unconscious to notice.

“I can help, if you don’t mind. It will go faster with two.” Madam Burke glances at Lily in cool request.

“Please,” Lily replies. “I’d rather concentrate on his ribs first, and then his hands.” One of her potions should help dispatch that concussion, and if not, she’ll deal with that afterwards.

“Thank you.” Madam Burke raises her wand, murmuring the incantations for repairing fractured bones under her breath.

“I’m just—I’ll take Regulus into the kitchen.” James sounds like he’s at a complete loss. Lily is, too, but at least she has the distraction of having a job to do. She glances over her shoulder at Regulus, who is still staring at Salazar.

“It isn’t as if he’s going anywhere,” Lily says dryly. Regulus meets her eyes, smiles a little, and then follows James down the hall.

The last time Lily saw the robes Regulus is currently wearing, Slughorn’s last Slug Club party of the school term had just ended. Regulus Black was on his way back to the Slytherin dormitories, cutting a tall and impressive figure; Lily was just a short sixth-year Gryffindor Prefect in school robes, out on curfew patrol. Regulus was always civil to her before, but after January that year, they didn’t speak to each other. The clear line of war was drawn in the sand, and not even Hogwarts could ignore it any longer.

That night in June, for a brief moment, Lily had been tempted to call out to Regulus, to at least _try_. “It isn’t only James. I’m dating your brother, too!” she’d thought of saying. Just to see what would happen.

Then the moment was gone, and Lily never got another chance.

“Did the three of you know each other in Hogwarts? Yourself, James, and Robert?” Madam Burke asks politely, startling Lily out of her thoughts.

“Should I say Robert or Regulus?” Lily counters.

Madam Burke seems to approve of the question. “Robert might be a wise habit to develop. Legally, that is currently his name.”

“Robert it is, then.” Lily smiles as she realizes that she slipped into the Slytherin trading game. “We weren’t really friends, but I spent time with him on occasion. Severus was my friend, and Regulus was his friend. It wasn’t so bad, those first years. The rivalry, I mean. Sirius was leery of Regulus because of their parents and the rest of his nutter family. The rest of his friends in Gryffindor followed his example—they left well enough alone. Then the war got worse. I think after 1975, almost everyone had already done something they regretted, even if it was silly and trivial.”

“I certainly had, and it was neither silly nor trivial.” Madam Burke clucks her tongue in disapproval. “Saul, you idiot. You were walking on that leg.”

“Did you want to be a midwife when you graduated from Hogwarts?” Lily asks.

“Did you want to be a healer?” Madam Burke responds.

Lily winces in sympathy when she magically corrects Salazar’s curse-twisted fingers. His ribs were worse, but at least she couldn’t see bones twisting and knitting as the damage reversed itself. “No. I hadn’t actually decided what I wanted to do with my life when I graduated. I’m excellent at Charms and not bad at Potions, but the Wizarding world isn’t exactly great at presenting you with job opportunities aside from the Ministry.”

“And the Ministry in 1978 would not have been looking to hire a Muggle-born.”

Lily snorts in immediate derision. “No. They would have called it a kindness to keep me out, especially now that Muggle-borns and Half-bloods are being pressured to quit the Ministry. The ones who don’t sometimes just disappear. Dead, probably, or maybe they ran when they realized how bad it was getting, but Arthur—Arthur Weasley—he said in January last year that there are a lot of empty desks in the Ministry these days.”

Madam Burke nods. “I would imagine so.”

“Then I got married, got pregnant, had to go into hiding to safeguard my unborn son, and then I’ve had to _stay_ in hiding ever since.” Lily sighs and lowers her wand, giving her arms a brief rest. “You would think that being stuck at home with not much to do aside from caring for a baby would make you think about the future, and it does, at first. Then your priorities get narrower and narrower, until finally you don’t care about a career. All you want to do is to be free to walk down to the nearest bloody chippy if the mood strikes!”

Madam Burke is silent for a little while. “I was married while still attending Hogwarts, the summer of my sixth year. As I was now properly wed, I was told by my parents that I didn’t have to return to school. I went back, anyway. I wanted to graduate. I’d always liked babies.” Her lips twitch. “Don’t tell anyone. It would ruin my cold reputation.”

Lily bites back a smile. “Not a soul.”

“My husband was willing to tolerate my healer training, my _hobby_ , as he so delightfully put it, until I gave birth to our son.” Madam Burke’s tone abruptly shifts, becoming clipped and unhappy. “I kept up with my training, even if I couldn’t use it. When my son went to Hogwarts, I then acted as a private midwife to wealthy Pure-blood families for ten months out of the year.”

“I’m sorry,” Lily murmurs. “About Octavian. It was such a shock, seeing the notice in the _Daily Prophet_ about his death, because it wasn’t—”

“In battle?” Madam Burke shakes her head. “I think if he had died that way, you and I would not be having this conversation.”

Lily uses a healing spell to finish ridding Salazar of the concussion. He must have struck something very hard to cause that one; he’s lucky the damage wasn’t worse. “You mean that You-Know-Who killed him.”

“Yes.” Despite her curt tone, Madam Burke’s wand never falters. “Octavian wasn’t meant to be a Death Eater, but Basil and I both believed…we believed,” she repeats, and Lily nods her understanding. “Octavian spoke out against certain behaviors, saying that the Death Eaters, the Knights of Walpurgis, were meant to be better. The Dark Lord overheard him, understood that to mean Octavian was questioning his authority, and tortured him. The Cruciatus Curse is his favorite, as you can see by the damage Saul suffered.

“When that happened, Basil was already six months dead. I watched my son be tortured, and I did nothing, because I believed that torture was all it would be. The Dark Lord has long been in the habit of torturing those who fail him as an example to others, but killing us? I thought he wouldn’t. I believed he wouldn’t, even after he used the Dark Mark to kill Katrina Farley.”

Lily swallows, sickened. She hadn’t known that Voldemort could kill his followers that way. She knew Katrina Farley in school, too, even if they didn’t associate because of their age differences. Farley had been a fourth-year student in 1971, but Lily can still clearly remember her face.

 _Severus,_ Lily thinks, and then resumes her casting, reminding herself that Severus is smart. He isn’t going to be caught easily. He learned too much about evading the enemy from the Marauders, and from his own parents. If—if he dies, it won’t be because of Voldemort and that damned Dark Mark.

It might be something worse. Oh, God, could her brain maybe _not_ present her with so many other worse options?

“That’s why Robert faked his death,” Lily realizes as she works. “If he hadn’t, You-Know-Who could kill him through the Dark Mark.”

“Yes, he would,” Madam Burke agrees. “But at the time he chose to craft the means of his believed demise, Robert’s greatest danger was not the Dark Lord. It was Bellatrix Black Lestrange.”

Lily growls under her breath. “She’s still in the habit of murdering family she doesn’t approve of, huh?”

“So it would seem. Regardless…” Madam Burke mutters an incantation over Salazar’s knee that seems to ease some of the lines of pain on his face. “I was absolutely certain that Octavian would recover from the Cruciatus torture, having learned the lesson, right until the moment that the Dark Lord cast the Killing Curse.”

Madam Burke’s voice is absolutely frigid. “I joined the Underground two weeks later.”

“You didn’t know,” Lily says, and Madam Burke glares at her. “I know. You’ve probably heard it before, often, but…you didn’t know, and I’m really sorry. Octavian, he was a Pure-blood, yes, but he never treated me badly because I wasn’t. I don’t think I ever saw Octavian be rude to anyone at Hogwarts. He was kind, and he didn’t deserve to die that way.”

Madam Burke’s glare morphs into a stare of studious examination, like she’s trying to figure out if Lily is being honest. Then she nods. “Your sympathy is appreciated. I’m finished with my work. Are you?”

Lily casts the diagnostic charm again, studying it in relief. “Salazar will still be in pain when he wakes, at least until he takes that last potion, but yes, we’re done. You do excellent work.”

“As do you,” Madam Burke replies. Lily wonders if they just had a Slytherin sort of conversation, where another sort of discussion was happening beneath the surface of their words. Whatever it was about, Lily hopes she managed to give the right answers.

* * * *

Lily and Madam Burke find Regulus and James sitting at the kitchen table, both of them complaining about Sirius’s tendency to lead from the front—usually as a loud, obnoxious target. Now tea has been made and distributed, and Madam Burke is investigating Lily’s kitchen with a gaze that seems mild and curious rather than disapproving.

Lily’s second cup of cooling tea is cradled in her hands. She feels worn through already, and these people have only been in her house for thirty minutes.

“Saul told us that you’re both aware of what a Horcrux is,” Regulus says.

 _Robert_ , Lily reminds herself. _His name is Robert_. It even feels like it suits him.

“Not until last week, we didn’t,” James answers for them both. “Sal mentioned that my family wanted to keep that rabbit underneath its hat until there wasn’t a choice in the matter.”

Robert pulls a face that is still far too mindful of school, a stark reminder that he’s only nineteen. Lily is just two years older and feels ancient in comparison. “You got lucky. Sirius and myself, our education in Dark magic was exceptional thanks to Uncle Pollux and Aunt Cassiopeia. My brother knows what a Horcrux is, and exactly what the results are if you shove one of those things into a human being. If he knew about your son being threatened this way by the Dark Lord, Sirius would be furious.”

James raises an eyebrow. “No, Sirius would declare a blood feud against every Death Eater family siding with You-Know-Who, along with You-Know-Who himself, burn them all down, salt the earth, and then piss on it afterwards for good measure.”

Robert shrugs. “That’s exactly what I said, just with fewer words.”

“What a charming visual,” Madam Burke says. Lily can’t tell if she’s offended or amused. The woman might as well be wearing a mask when she isn’t in the mood to share. “The Talbots are also firm believers in a full education. My husband, to his credit, was not so well informed when it came to the fouler magics. It’s commonly translated that Horcrux is an Old English term that means _evil jar_ , but that is incorrect. _Horu_ is the term for muck in Old English, yes, but _crux_ is from the Latin _crucis_ —torture and misery. A Horcrux, a soul jar, is foul misery for the one who creates it, and for any living being who is made to bear one.”

“And the only means to protect a living Horcrux victim from becoming the creator’s puppet…someone literally has to die for them.” Lily tightens her grip on her cup. “Is there any other way to prevent the puppet bit?”

“Sure.” Regulus rests his folded hands on the table in mimicry of the precise manners Sirius used to subconsciously demonstrate, at least before he made it a goal to obliterate most of them. “Figure out how to permanently steal all of the magic from the one who created the Horcrux in the first place. Barring that, figure out how to block their connection to the Horcrux in question.”

James lifts his glasses with one hand and rubs his eyes. “Gee, that sounds simple. Let’s get right on that, shall we?”

Robert smirks. “Of course, that means finding the other four.”

Lily narrows her eyes. “But there are five. Sal told us that there were five.”

“Oh, there are still five, but Kreacher is guarding the one I nearly died retrieving.” Robert tells them all about the Inferi-infested literal death trap. It was meant to safeguard a bit of unknown gold jewelry that is either Horcrux number three or Horcrux number four. Lily doesn’t think it matters unless they’re discussing upcoming Horcrux number six.

“That’s why everyone believes you’re dead. Because Kreacher believes it—no, no, that doesn’t work.” James shakes his head. “That wouldn’t cause your date of death to turn up on the family tree in London. That’s why your mother knew.”

“It wasn’t just Kreacher convincing the Dark Lord of my death. It’s blood magic,” Robert says. Lily is glad she already knows what Blood Magic is supposed to be used for, or all of her shite Hogwarts DADA training would have her ready to point a wand again. “I’m tied to the foundation stone of a home built over a magical node. That’s a massive source of power that basically acts like magical camouflage. It essentially erases anyone tied to it from magical sight, so things like the Pure-blood family trees, scrying, and the like, they can’t see you any longer. To the magic that constructs a family tree, that sudden absence is translated as a death.”

James lifts his hand and points in the direction of the parlor. “Sal’s house, I’m guessing. The Willow House.”

After Robert and Madam Burke both nod, Madam Burke says, “Everyone in the Underground is tied to that foundation stone. It is the last test to ensure the Underground’s safety, to prove that our intentions regarding the Dark Lord’s defeat are certainty, not falsehood. If a member is believed to be dead, Saul can then alter that magic so it masks their magical signature, as it does for Robert.”

“That’s why people would actually believe we’re dead, then.” James gives up on tea, stands up, and goes rummaging around in the fridge for mead or beer. “Yeah, I’ve already hit my limit for how much sobriety I can handle when we’re talking about this. Any takers? No hard liquor in the house, just good stiff beer, mead, and butterbeer.”

“Not me,” Lily declines. James tends to calm down if he has a drink. Lily thinks it’s the act itself that’s soothing, not the alcohol, a remembrance of having a snifter of brandy with his grandfather in the evenings. Lily, though—give her a drink, and she gets tense and unhappy. She doesn’t need any help with that right now.

Robert says yes to beer. Madam Burke asks if they have wine.

James grimaces as he nudges the fridge door shut with his elbow. “Technically, yes, but it’s at the family manor. If I went to retrieve it, I’d have to use the phrase to end the Death Fidelius, and then everyone would know that I have access to the manor. I’d rather keep it hidden, at least for now.”

“More tea is fine, then,” Madam Burke decides. “It’s an excellent Assam.”

“Thanks. It was my grandmother’s favorite.” James hands off one of the two retrieved bottles to Robert, whose eyes light up at the sight of the sight of black beer. Lily has no idea where Hogwarts house-elves are getting _schwarzbier_ , and she’s pretty sure she shouldn’t ask.

“I’m sorry,” Robert says after a painfully awkward silence. “About…I’m glad I wasn’t asked to be involved that night. No one ever knows what’s going to happen on Hallowe’en until the Dark Lord decides to leave.”

“Except for this year,” Lily murmurs.

Robert nods. “Yeah. I imagine this year, whoever he chooses to go try to exterminate another family are going to be a distraction, just like Bristol was for the McKinnons. No one ever knows _who_ is going to be called to assist the Dark Lord on Hallowe’en until they’re called through the Dark Mark. There is no warning, for them or for us.”

James pales. “Then they don’t have a choice, either.”

“No, but I wouldn’t shed any tears for that lot,” Robert says. “The Dark Lord is good at picking out those who have no qualms about murdering everyone in their path without concern or remorse.” He pulls up the sleeve of his robe, baring his left forearm and revealing the Dark Mark. It looks like an ugly, damning bruise in the bright light of the kitchen. “I can’t get rid of it. No one who’s accepted the Mark can do so. I have to stay dead until Voldemort’s defeated, or he’ll kill me. Or worse, he’ll Summon me using the Mark until refusing to answer drives me mad. Literally.”

Lily has to put down her tea so it doesn’t slosh out of her cup. “You-Know-Who could do that to anyone in the Underground with the Mark. Or to any Death Eater spy in the Order, if he was—if they were caught.”

Madam Burke’s smile is grim. “I would not worry about that one. If I didn’t know better, _I_ would be convinced that Severus Snape is utterly loyal to the Dark Lord. He is very good at the dance of words. It’s been a delight to watch him make a fool of those like Lucius Malfoy, knowing that Malfoy isn’t aware of the insult that just occurred.” Then she inclines her head at James. “I was also grateful not to be involved in the events of Hallowe’en 1979. I find the entire idea of wiping out magical bloodlines to be an act of craven stupidity. But…”

“Jewel.” Robert gives Madam Burke a pained stare. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t even need to say why.”

“I do, though!” Madam Burke snaps, and then immediately grants Robert an apologetic look. “Lily Juniper Evans, now properly titled as Lady Lily Black Potter; Lord James Henry Potter, Head of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter: I have done things during this long war that cannot be forgiven. Octavian’s death, I hold as my worst failure, but there are so many others. I used the twist of words to keep myself from being used as a tool within the Dark Lord’s court to kill allies, but others, the enemy—for them, I held no mercy. I once believed I was on a great crusade, and acted as such, and proved myself to be as foolish as those knights who once attempted to claim Jerusalem by right of God. I can do little to atone for the blood I’ve shed save one thing. I can make certain that another child is not lost. I can ensure that another mother does not suffer the way I do.”

Lily feels like her heart just turned into a cold lump of dread. “You mean to die in my place. Because it has to be a mother’s sacrifice.”

Madam Burke looks at Lily, and for once, the mask is missing. Her grief for Octavian is a burning, unquenchable flame that brightens her eyes even as sorrow weighs down and ages her face. “Lily Black Potter. When we met once before, I was…not kind.”

“When did that happen?” James asks.

“Octavian invited Madam Burke to one of Slughorn’s Slug Club parties in seventh year,” Lily says. “You were distracted by one of Slughorn’s famous guests, so I was alone when Octavian decided to introduce me to his mother. I knew you weren’t being kind, Madam Burke, but at least you were polite. A lot of Slughorn’s Pure-blood guests couldn’t be bothered to mind their manners.”

Lily had been called Mudblood a record-breaking number of times during that party. That was the night she decided she was going to fight for the Order after graduation. It felt like a better option than waiting around for one of those Pure-blood bastard Death Eaters to blast their way into her home and murder her.

“A point in my favor, I suppose,” Madam Burke allows. “Lily Black Potter, I can protect what is yours when I could not protect my own. I volunteered to do so. I have no desire to live a long life while being slowly suffocated by my own guilt and grief. I don’t yet know Harry James Potter, but I would like to. And, when the time comes, your son deserves to know his family.”

“But…” Lily closes her eyes and takes a calming breath. No, that didn’t work; she is _not_ calm. “Madam Burke—”

“My name is Jewel.” Lily opens her eyes to find Madam Burke gazing at her in complete understanding. “I gave up my son to the madman who caused his death. You are giving up your son so that you might all live, but that does not change the nature of the pain it causes.”

“No,” Lily whispers. “It really doesn’t.”

James looks at Regulus. “Please don’t tell me that you’re dying in my place.”

Robert shakes his head. “No. There isn’t a need for that. We’ll pick a convenient bastard of a Death Eater. We Polyjuice him and then use the Imperius Curse so he’ll play nicely, firmly convinced he’s you, until the Dark Lord turns up and kills him.”

The back of Lily’s throat burns from the hint of bile. “That’s…cold.”

“It’s necessary,” Regulus responds, but he doesn’t look happy about it. “Try to think of it as the lesser of two evils. Personally, I’d rather the Dark Lord kills one of his horrific followers instead of James.”

James slumps back in his chair. “And you can’t use the Imperius Curse to recreate love. It has to be…”

“It has to be me,” Jewel says, “and believe me when I say that I truly relish this opportunity for revenge, one that the Dark Lord himself will grant me.”

[1] Punjabi: Enemies are not allies.


	38. Duplicitous Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Lily is kind of freaked out by the idea that we’re going to be living with someone who intends to die for her.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All hail beta-flailer @norcumii.
> 
> (wtf brain I know you're all over the map right now because of politics and medical crap, but typing writing words again would be nice??)

James turns a chair into a Transfigured bed for Madam Burke, if she wants it. It’s crammed in as neatly as he can manage in the room that’s meant to be the cottage sitting room, but instead it became Dad’s eclectic library of clutter. When James, Lily, and Sirius moved in, none of them wanted to change it. After Hallowe’en 1979, James was glad they hadn’t. It’s still very much his father’s room, even though the three of them raided its books and oddities often enough that it should have begun to feel like theirs. Madam Burke thanks him for the hospitality, but looks far more interested in the books than in sleeping.

Regulus, _Robert_ —shit, that’s weird—saves everyone the trouble of trying to figure out where to put another bed and passes out on the rug next to the parlor sofa, his head resting on a sofa cushion with one of Mum’s old knitted blankets twisted around his shoulders. Lily brings out one of Grandmother Alice’s quilts for Sal, who is still so out of it that he doesn’t notice the extra weight.

Then Lily steps back and regards Robert. “That doesn’t look comfortable at all.”

“I doubt he cares, Lil.” James doesn’t know about Jewel, but underneath the sober explanations and the occasional smile, Robert doesn’t look as if he’s slept much lately. He’s not as bad off as Sal, but Sal has definitely had a lot longer to practice being a functional person when sleep isn’t a thing.

Upstairs, James and Lily check on Harry, though James lingers in the nursery doorway. He still has no idea what he’s doing wrong, but if he walks into that room when Harry is sleeping, Harry wakes up. Sirius only ever manages it as Padfoot. Lily is the one who can sneak in and out with impunity.

Lily resettles Harry’s kicked-away blanket and joins James in the doorway. “It’s like the stories you read sometimes, about parents who gave their kids up for adoption to give them a better life. This feels like that, doesn’t it?”

James feels his heart twist and his gut clench. “It does. And…and that’s what we’re really doing. Even if it takes a while.”

“I hate that part,” Lily whispers. “I hate that it will be fourteen years before things get better for him, but we have to.”

“Yeah.” James buries his nose in Lily’s hair, smelling the hint of her apple blossom shampoo and the warmth beneath that is just _her_. “I think it’s the only way we can give Harry a chance, too.”

Lily’s arms tighten around him. “Because if we don’t…

“Then it’s like that Pensieve memory.” James swallows. “You-Know-Who will just keep trying, just keep killing everyone in his path. He won’t stop. He’ll never stop, not until we’re all dead and Britain is his.”

Lily sighs and leads James back to their bedroom. “I’m exhausted.”

“I don’t know how I’ll be able to sleep,” James admits. “I think I’m going to stay up for a while and listen to more of the tapes.” That’s been slow going, mostly because James often has to pause the tape until he stops crying.

“As long as you hold me, I’ll sleep through a bomb blast,” Lily declares, so that’s what he does. Lily falls asleep with her head pillowed on his chest, her hair a long length of braided fire; James sits up in bed with his arms clasped loosely around her. He uses a pair of Muggle headphones connected to Lily’s cassette player to listen as his grandmother tells him stories from centuries ago, when her ancestors still lived in Gurkani. That part of the empire would eventually become East Punjab, and then Haryana.

James is pretty sure that Elizabetha Potter’s soothing voice and his wife’s warm, reassuring weight are the only reasons he sleeps at all. He wakes up in the morning, bleary-eyed from sleep and his lacking glasses. The latter is easy to fix. The former requires a shower.

Lily rolled away from him in her sleep and is curled up on her side. James drops a kiss onto her shoulder and gets out of bed to prepare for another weird day.

When he exits their bedroom, James automatically listens for his son’s morning babble. Harry’s voice isn’t coming from the nursery, but from downstairs.

James nearly loses his mind to blind panic before reminding himself that there are other people in his house, and they are _not_ the enemy. One of them is his sodding brother-in-law, Harry’s uncle. Besides, Regulus is a Black. Pollux Black and his siblings are the outliers when it comes to their family, even if Sirius II really was completely mad. Blacks look after each other, and anyone who harms their family often doesn’t live long enough to regret it. Regulus and Sirius might have Pollux’s sister Walburga for a mother, but their father was Orion Black, brother of Arcturus III, Regulus I, and Lycoris. Regulus I and Lycoris Black were both good people, friends of James’s family. Arcturus Black III is not only a family friend, he’s Lucretia Prewett’s father, and he’s fighting on their side in this war.

It isn’t Regulus downstairs in the kitchen with Harry, but Sal. He’s seated at the kitchen table, and Harry is in his high chair, ignoring his cereal in favor of having a staring contest with Sal.

“Oh,” James says, and then feels like a moron. “Good morning, champ. Good morning, insane person in my house. You look better than you did last night.”

Sal glances at him, amused. “Good morning, kind host. I look a bit less like death, I take it?”

“Yeah.” James opens the refrigerator, hunting for orange juice. They were running low yesterday, but the house-elves haven’t let them run out of it yet. He finds the refilled jug and snags a clean glass from the cabinet. The house-elves get upset if they clean their own dishes, or do the laundry, or handle anything housekeeping-related, so Lily and James gave up and decided to just enjoy the freedom from chores while it lasts.

“Did you wake up with an infant on your chest or something?” James asks. Fresh coffee is waiting in the electric Muggle coffee pot that Lily threatened into not dying just because it lives in a magical household, and a mugful of it is sitting near Sal’s elbow. Lily could live on coffee, but James hates the stuff. He prefers juice in the morning, or a good masala chai, but it’s been hard enough facing a cup of Gran’s favorite Assam, much less her blended chai.

“He hasn’t yet figured out how to escape that cot, but I would look to him making the attempt soon.” Sal glances down at the cereal Harry is ignoring. Harry follows his gaze and looks surprised to find food waiting for him. “This one and his lack of interest in sleeping. He woke before anyone. I heard him hissing about the toy dragon flying around in the nursery. Given the late night I caused you, I thought I’d spare you and Lily the early waking.”

James’s shoulders still want to tense up at the idea that someone who wasn’t Harry’s parents or a Marauder going into the nursery, and reminds himself, again, that he’s being ridiculous. “Thanks.”

Sal gives him a brief glance, one that tells James that Sal knew exactly what he was just thinking about. “How was the little one’s birthday?”

“It was good,” James says, but Sal seems to be expecting a bit more detail. “Sirius gave Harry a toy broom, his very first, and Harry fell asleep in the ruins of a birthday cake.”

“You’re a natural insomniac, and yet it’s a pile of sugar that does you in.” Sal smiles and wandlessly turns Harry’s dry cereal into a pyramid-shaped pile. Harry lets out a shriek of laughter and smashes the pyramid with both hands. “I noticed that a stuffed black Newfoundland replaced the unwanted platypus.”

James notices stuffed Padfoot is on the table where Harry can see him, but out of reach of cereal-sticky fingers. “That was mine and Lily’s present for him. We don’t exactly have an owl we can use to send off for gifts. Remus gave him his family’s copy of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_. I think he’s given up on the idea of ever having kids of his own to pass it on to. I know Remus is still alive in 1995, but…gods, Sal, Remus already looks like he’s starving to death.”

“That one won’t have a kind path for a long while, and part of it will be due to his own stubbornness,” Saul says. James definitely can’t argue with that. “Remus Lupin is stronger than he believes himself to be, James. It will take a while for him to find his way, but he’ll manage it.”

James swallows his mouthful of orange juice before he starts choking on it. “That wasn’t just a guess. That was Divination.”

“A bit,” Sal admits. “Scrying is easier for me, but Divination will have its way whether you’re prepared for it or not. Your grandmother would have taught you how to recognize it.”

“Gran said that I’d better not be daft enough to take Divination at Hogwarts when it’s being taught by an idiot,” James says wryly. “After I met Professor Thorn, I agreed with Gran. He’s a nice enough bloke, but such a complete fraud. Where are the others?”

“Jewel is still behind the closed door of your father’s office. Robert was snoring on the floor when I left the parlor, with a tortoiseshell cat perched upon his head.” Sal catches the piece of cereal that Harry throws at him. “That was not polite,” he says to Harry’s vexed expression. “Also, I am vastly more practiced at catching things than you are at throwing them.”

“Dragon is sleeping on Regulus Black’s head.” James polishes off the orange juice and considers frying up something for breakfast. They probably have enough bacon rashers to feed an army. “Lily’s cat is weird.”

“Not a family cat, is she?”

“You’d think so, but Dragon only listens to Lily. She loves Harry, though, so I forgive her,” James replies. “You’re wanting to know how I handled it with Peter, aren’t you?”

“I do, but I didn’t wish to press the matter.” Sal catches another piece of cereal, puts it back, and then taps the high chair tray. Harry tries to pick up his next piece of ammunition and discovers that it’s all been glued in place with a Sticking Charm. Fortunately, instead of finding it distressing, Harry thinks it’s hilarious. “There is already much that has been said, and so much of it harsh.”

“Lily is kind of freaked out by the idea that we’re going to be living with someone who intends to die for her,” James says bluntly.

“The four of you had a chance to discuss quite a bit, then.” Sal doesn’t release the Sticking Charm until Harry looks up at him, hissing out something that’s accompanied by wide, pleading eyes. “That’s blackmail, little one. I approve.”

“We did, yeah. A random Death Eater, huh?”

“Not so random as you might think,” Sal counters. “Never fear; he’ll be of the sort that a Wizengamot trial would see him directly handed off to the Dementors.”

James should probably still disapprove, but the Killing Curse is a kinder way to die than being fed to a Dementor. “Peter doesn’t suspect that we know he’s full of…excrement,” James corrects himself, not wanting to be the reason his son starts swearing. That is school’s job, not his. “I used a Legilimency trick and boxed everything up so I could get through Harry’s birthday party and act like everything was normal. Lily is a terrifying actress, by the way.”

Sal makes a thoughtful noise. “Why was the rat Obliviated?”

James nearly asks why Sal would know that before he remembers that the Underground would’ve needed the Secret Keeper’s phrase for the newest version of the Fidelius Charm, which would’ve involved more drinking and Legilimency-fishing. “That happened the next day, after Sirius left. Lily…” James finds one Harry’s baby-sized cups when he starts making grabby motions at the orange juice. “She wanted to see it. The Dark Mark. She cast the Imperius Curse on him from behind.”

“Ruthless.” Sal sounds as if he approves.

James turns around and holds out the cup to Harry, not quite in reach. “Manners, champ. Say _please._ ”

Harry wrinkles his nose. Then he glances at Sal, realizes he has a translator, and lets out a brief hiss.

“You won’t be able to cheat like that forever,” Sal tells Harry as James passes over the juice. James might not understand Parseltongue, but he knows when Harry is trying to be sly. This was just a shortcut, not mischief.

Robert wanders into the kitchen with Dragon resting on his shoulder, purring loud enough to be heard from the bloody moon. “Your cat likes me. I think. Cats purr when they’re happy, right? This isn’t some weird prelude to murder?”

James would think Robert was joking if Sirius hadn’t once asked the exact same questions. The Black townhouse in London should probably be classified as a Five-X Wizarding Hazard. “Yes, Dragon likes you. A lot. Get used to charming cat hair off your clothing.”

“All right.” Then Robert spies the refrigerator. He puts Dragon on the floor, and she promptly hides under the table. “Hey, I love these things. Muggle inventions are a hell of a lot more useful than we give them credit for. Can I raid this fridge?”

“The house-elves will be delighted that we seem to at last be eating to their satisfaction. Go for it. Oh, and don’t swear in front of your nephew.”

Robert nearly turns himself inside-out trying to twist around to look at Harry. “Oh, shi—uhm. Hi there.”

Harry is staring at Robert, his little brow furrowed at the strange person in their kitchen. Then he looks at James. “Dad?”

“That’s your Uncle Regulus, but for now, we’re calling him your Uncle Robert. He’s Padfoot’s brother.”

Harry looks at Robert again and smiles. “Pa’fut oo!”

“I don’t speak baby,” Robert says. “What did he just say?”

“Congratulations,” James drawls. “You’ve just been declared Padfoot Two.”

Robert still looks baffled. “Who the heck is Padfoot?”

Now Harry is _insulted_. He points at stuffed Padfoot. “Pa’fut!”

James sighs. It isn’t supposed to be his job to explain this. “Padfoot is your brother’s Animagus form. Big black Newfoundland.”

“My brother’s an Animagus? Nobody mentioned that!” Robert exclaims indignantly. “Saul!”

Sal is bent over the table, resting his head on his right arm, gasping out laughter. “I’ve got to keep some secrets, Robert, else it takes all the fun out of things! Speaking of fun, remind me to kill Alex Fawley for last night’s shenanigans.”

Robert turns around and shoves his face into the open refrigerator. “Monica already took care of that.”

Sal sits up, scowling. “I’d prefer to have done that myself!”

“Fawley blundered, and you took the punishment that was meant to kill him,” Robert points out without interrupting his refrigerator raid. “If Monica hadn’t called dibs, Jewel would’ve done it because she doesn’t want you sullying your wand with the blood of idiots. I’m not daft enough to stand in front of either of _their_ wands. I like being alive.”

Sal rolls his eyes. “It’s a bit late to be defending my wand’s honor, which is a sentence I never in my life thought I would ever need to say.”

James starts laughing. He has to, or he’ll be crying, curling up in a corner of the basement and refusing to come out.

Harry takes advantage of everyone’s distraction and flings two fistfuls of cereal across the kitchen. Dragon scrabbles over tile to chase after the scattering pieces, which makes Robert shriek like some kind of Muggle dinosaur and try to scale the countertop when the cat goes flying by. Harry crows his victory at getting cereal past Sal, and James’s day begins with unfolding chaos.

It’s the most normal morning he’s had in years.

* * * *

Lily wakes up alone in bed, but she can hear enough noise from downstairs to figure out that it’s morning. She thinks about breakfast and doesn’t find the idea as nauseating as it has been for the last week, a combination of nerves stacked atop fear and more nerves. Even better: she can smell coffee. That’s worth getting up to shower for.

By the time Lily goes downstairs, Jewel is emerging from Monty’s old library. She’s as perfectly coifed as she had been last night, but her clothes have been Transfigured into a dark violet gown with black robes. “You look very polished,” Lily says, because it seems polite.

Jewel is raising an eyebrow at Lily’s denims. “Are those as comfortable to wear as you make them appear?”

“You’d be surprised.”

Lily Summons the other chairs for the table from the basement, and Jewel sits down next to Salazar with a polite nod. Her eyes linger on Harry in his high chair, though, and Lily knows she isn’t mistaking the longing in her eyes. It isn’t necessarily longing for Harry; Lily thinks that right now, Jewel is remembering what Octavian was like as a baby.

“Did he eat already?” Lily asks, noticing a piece of cereal caught in the short curls of Salazar’s dark hair.

“That wasn’t a meal. That was a war,” Salazar replies, but he’s smiling at Harry when he says it. Harry is too busy marching stuffed Padfoot back and forth in his empty high chair tray to notice, but he does tilt his head back and grin at her after Lily drops a kiss on top of her son’s unruly black hair.

Robert is the one attacking the kitchen in order to make breakfast, which is bewildering to watch until he mentions he’s been living Muggle for nearly a year now. James, per Lily’s standing ruling, is only allowed to cook bacon so everything else survives to be served. Salazar looks as if he wants to help Robert, but is promptly distracted when Lily hands him the potion she couldn’t give him last night.

“What is this?” Salazar tilts the phial back and forth as he holds it up so the sunlight will illuminate its contents. “It’s powerful, but I don’t…is this one of Elizabetha’s creations?”

“She said it was,” Lily answers. “I brewed it this week just to be certain I still could. It removes curse damage. Looks like I have good timing.”

Salazar lowers the phial, grief flitting across his features so quickly she almost misses it. “Elizabetha mentioned she was trying to make such a thing. I didn’t know she had succeeded. There was so little time to speak to each other that last year. All Elizabetha could tell me when it was last discussed was that I would receive the potion when I needed it. Does it work?”

“I was hit with the blasted Cruciatus Curse late in 1978,” James says without turning around. He learned the hard way that bacon will take offence and toss grease at you if you’re not paying attention. “I’m pretty sure I was Gran’s lab rat, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t even hold onto my wand until after I drank it. Even if it’s not perfect, that potion helped me recover a lot faster than any of the nerve-soothing brews would have.”

“This isn’t you drinking it yet,” Lily says to regain Salazar’s attention.

“No, this is me trying to discern how it was made,” Salazar replies, pulling the phial’s stopper. He doesn’t make an amateur’s mistake of taking a deep sniff, but simply holds the open phial under his nose. “Saffron. Why am I not surprised? Helps to relax seizing muscles, antioxidant properties for cleansing. You’re buying it dried?”

“I can grow a lot of things, but not that,” Lily admits. “Elizabetha’s plants have probably gone to seed by now.”

“Perhaps, but Elizabetha was protective of her garden. She might’ve placed charms to prevent such a thing,” Salazar says. “Aloe vera, also a cleansing agent, definitely fresh. Poppyseed extract for pain. Roses as another anti-spasmodic. You’re using roses from the back garden? Modern roses don’t have the same qualities.”

Lily has only ever watched Severus pull a potion apart like this, and it’s just as fascinating to watch. She’s decent at brewing, but she is nowhere near their level of skill. “Yes. You have to wait until the rose has gone to seed, and then collect the petals before they dry.”

“Perfect. Then there is fresh dill turned into an infusion with aniseed. And…” Salazar gives her a surprised look. “Apple as in the fruit, not the blossom?”

“An entire apple, peeled, no core,” Lily clarifies. “Wild-picked, and not a crabapple, either.”

“An entire…” Salazar pulls the potion away from his nose to study it again. “How many times was this reduced?” Lily holds up three fingers, smiling. “Three. Different cauldron metals?” She nods. “Which would have imparted certain other qualities, but I’m still missing something. Those alone wouldn’t remove curse damage.” He finally drinks it, probably because he wants to know what else is in the potion.

Lily watches, trying not to feel impatient. Salazar’s brow is furrowed in thought, probably cataloguing everything about the potion as it does its job. “Well, Sal? Does it work?”

“It really does,” Salazar says, “and I’m glad. There is literally only one other way to remove curse damage, and it’s by blood magic. There is nothing wrong with such a method, but it can make others uncomfortable. And…” He breaks into a broad grin that makes his eyes shine with delight. “That’s what she based it on, what I was missing. Los Nueve Reconstituyente.”

“What’s that?” James asks. “Something nine something is all I’m getting.”

“The Nine Restoratives. The potion behind the reason for the existence of The Nine Herbs Charm.”

Robert glances over his shoulder. “Nobody knows how to brew that anymore! No one’s managed to ever get the ratios right for it to do what it was supposed to have done.”

Salazar smirks at Robert. “Except its inventor, perhaps?”

Even Jewel looks up from her grim study of her tea. “That’s one of yours?”

“It is. The rhyming couplets were meant to spread the potion so others could easily recall it and brew it themselves. Elizabetha didn’t ask myself, though. I would imagine she either figured it out, or asked questions of a certain portrait in my home.”

James freezes in place. “Portrait, huh?”

“Don’t burn the bacon, James,” Lily reminds him, and then looks at Salazar. “We didn’t really know. If that was going to be something that—that happened.”

Salazar shakes his head. “I’ve been yelled at in Parseltongue for a solid week for not introducing the pair of you on the thirty-first. When and where you would like to speak to a portrait painted in the year 992 is up to the pair of you.”

“And…” James finishes scooping bacon into a serving plate before he turns around. “Regulus and Jewel. You were Slytherins, so you’ve seen…him. The portrait in the Slytherin Common Room.”

“The four of you really did fill in all the blanks last night, didn’t you?” Salazar waves his finger at stuffed Padfoot, distracting Harry from his developing lip wobble by floating his favorite toy in the air.

“My nephew is going to hit me in the face with a brick,” Robert whines. James snorts out a laugh and then tries to cover it up with a blatant fake cough.

“To be fair, Nizar didn’t know you were his uncle,” Salazar points out.

“Would that change anything?” Robert retorts.

Salazar tilts his head. “Probably not. If anything, you being family might mean that one brick becomes two.”

Robert shoves a spatula beneath an egg and flips it. “That’s not helping, Saul!”

“Do you have anything more substantial to tell us about than bricks?” James asks.

“Well…he was easy to talk to.” Robert rescues egg number nine or so and starts makes another. Lily isn’t certain they’re going to be able to eat a full dozen eggs in one sitting, but the house-elves will be overjoyed. “My first night in Hogwarts, I didn’t sleep at all. I knew for two years that Sirius was in Gryffindor and the family hated it, but somehow it didn’t really strike me how far apart we would be until the Houses split up after dinner. Sirius was going up the stairs, and I was heading into the dungeon. I got out of bed before anyone the next morning and went out into the Common Room, wondering what to do. Then I nearly jumped out of my skin when a portrait asked me why I was already out of bed at four in the morning, because the only person he knew who was that insanely dedicated to academia was himself.

“I’d never had a portrait speak to me, not like that. In the townhouse, they’re either silent, or they’re screaming. Not a lot of variation on the theme, either,” Robert adds. “Then this portrait, this person who has no idea who I am, asked me if I was all right. I remembered how Sirius used to ask me that, in the exact same way. It’s the tone, you know? It’s why you _know_ the person asking the question really wants to know the answer, and they’re ready to take after someone on your behalf. I told the portrait that my older brother was in another House and now he probably hated me, burst into tears, and suddenly had a house-elf shoving me into an armchair with a cup of tea, a scone, and a blanket. It was a weird morning.”

“Sirius didn’t hate you. He didn’t really know _how_ to feel about you,” James says quietly. “But he didn’t hate you, Regulus.”

“I figured that out when I realized Sirius had told the whole of Gryffindor that I was off-limits unless I lifted a wand first,” Robert replies, and another egg goes into the pan. Lily is beginning to suspect it has zilch to do with the eggs, and more that cooking them gives Robert something to do with his hands. “It was weird when the portrait already knew that Sirius was my brother, and my name was Regulus, at least until he said that Severus and Sirius and a few other Gryffindors had already been at war for two terms now, and it would be interesting to find out what their third year would bring.”

James winces. “Right. Nothing like the reminder that your kid knows you were a complete twit in school.”

Lily isn’t feeling so great about that, herself. If that particular portrait in the Slytherin Common Room knew about the Marauders, what _else_ did he know about? “How did Nizar—” Oh, God, that was so hard to say. “How did he know about Severus and the Marauders?”

“Oh, they spoke. Fairly often, I think,” Robert answers. With his back to them, he doesn’t notice how Lily freezes in place, and that it’s suddenly hard to breathe. “He did warn me away from the portrait if Severus was already there, though. Severus is so intensely private he might’ve decided I belonged in the Marauders category if I mucked that up—shit, I’m out of eggs.”

“We used to argue about the idea of blood purity,” Jewel suddenly says. She’s staring down at her teacup instead of facing them. “The Professor and I. He was intriguing, for a portrait, so the discussions continued even though I didn’t agree with him. He never spoke of his own blood status, which I foolishly assumed must be Pure-blood to bear the name he did. He was logical in his argument that blood purity was nonsense. I was firm in my belief that there could be no other way. The last time we spoke, he told me that one day I would come to realize that there was no such thing as a Pure-blood, Half-blood, or Muggle-born. Just magicians. Wizards and witches. I scoffed at him, turned up my nose, walked out of Hogwarts, and went directly to the first of the Dark Lord’s Diagon Alley speeches with my husband. I heard everything that I wanted to hear, and only after Octavian died did I think on that portrait’s words again. Only then did I realize how kind he had been to me. He was a Half-blood I would have scorned, but he never turned away. He still respected me for who I was, even while I acted the fool.”

“You said you still believe in blood purity, though.” Lily is thinking hard. Jewel didn’t have to say any of that, either. She didn’t need to tell them so much about Lily’s son, especially when those discussions must have been such intensely private things.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop, truly,” Jewel admits. “But I am learning to be better than I was, and if all I accomplish in this life is to…to accept what is, then at least I will be able to take pride in that.”

“Jewel?” Lily waits until Jewel is willing to look at her. “You’re volunteering to drink Polyjuice to impersonate a Muggle-born witch for the next three months—a potion which is made from pieces of this Muggle-born witch’s hair, by the way. Maybe you’re not as into blood purity as you still think you are.”

Jewel studies Lily with a harsh, thin-lipped expression that Lily refuses to back down from. “Maybe,” she finally murmurs, but she won’t discuss it further. Lily still counts it as a victory.

* * * *

Lily has no idea how any of them had an appetite aside from the man who’d been bleeding and unable to die on her sofa last night, and is sort of bewildered by the fact that they demolish _everything._ Rashers, eggs, toast, beans, tea, juice. It isn’t a full English, but that was more than Lily has managed to eat in one sitting since Harry was born. Afterwards, Robert and Jewel both leave, but only for the day. One of the three members of the Underground will be staying with James, Lily, and Harry at all times. That’s probably going to get weird in a hurry, but it’s also a relief. Albus’s insistence that both families remain in hiding alone, without help, always struck Lily as odd. If Voldemort had somehow shown up at their door, it meant fighting him alone, and the Order was told for years that _no one_ was supposed to do that, not unless they literally wanted to die.

“That is one thing we’ve needed to know for so long,” Salazar says. “What is the rest of that blasted prophecy?”

Lily glances at James, who shrugs, before she quotes it, beginning to end, the words that are meant to predict their son’s doom. “ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies_. It repeats again afterwards.”

“Marked as his equal, and power that the Dark Lord knows not. Well, that’s…already happened, in a manner of speaking.” Salazar’s gaze is distant as he mutters the words under his breath. “The mentioned death, and neither living while the other survives—that is not literal. This prophecy is speaking of the Horcrux, a problem that is dealt with, or will be, but is certainly no longer applicable after Hallowe’en 1995. Interesting.”

“Why is it interesting?” James asks. “Aside from how bloody awful it is.”

Salazar glances at him in surprise. “The balance of power will most certainly not be in You-Know-Who’s favor when the time comes for Nizar to face him. It will not be in his favor _every_ time. It will not even be in You-Know-Who’s favor the first, second, third, and fourth times your son faces him, though to an undertrained boy, it will most certainly seem otherwise for the latter three. However, there is nothing that speaks of your dying. There is nothing that speaks of more sacrifice.”

“You mean that…Albus wanted You-Know-Who to succeed with an attack so the prophecy would work. He knew which family would be targeted,” Lily manages, the words strangling themselves on their way out of her throat.

Albus wanted them to die. He wanted Harry to suffer.

Lily hasn’t ever really wanted anyone dead before aside from Voldemort. Peter and Albus Dumbledore have ensured that she really wants to kill all three of them for having the same damned goal: murdering her son.

Jewel is expected to be in Voldemort’s Court by that afternoon, so she leaves the cottage early. Lily can all but hear that capital C in Court, which is somehow pretentious and creepy at the same time. The expression on Jewel’s face showed brief disgust with the necessity of visiting that Court, and then it was gone, the impenetrable Pure-blood mask firmly in place.

Robert has a remote little cottage near the Lincolnshire Wolds. He still has a houseguest in the form of recovering Benjy Fenwick—Bailey Robin, they learn, which is another new name to memorize and use. Robert says he’s off to make certain Bailey is as recovered as she claims to be, especially when it took a week longer than their healer expected for her to feel up to stumbling around the house again. If Bailey really is up to snuff and “Not being ridiculous this time,” then Robert will see her home. For Bailey, that’s York, but Robert mentions that Bailey wants to relocate to Muggle London as soon as the war is done. He does, too, but has the difficulty of needing to wait until certain annoying members of his family are in Azkaban, or they conveniently drop dead so he never has to deal with them again. “Not that I expect Mother, Uncle Pollux, or Aunt Cassiopeia to _ever_ sully themselves by roaming around a Muggle London street, but better cautious than dead. I didn’t fake my death just to have Cousin Bellatrix track me down and point a wand at my back.”

Lily, James, and Salazar stay in the kitchen, but only so they can keep an eye on Harry. He’s too aware of what’s going on, her smart baby boy, and he can’t listen to most of what they need to talk about. Harry is delighted by the chance to ride his little broom again in the back garden, with Dragon out there to keep an eye on him as an effective feline babysitter.

James watches Harry from the open doorway for a few minutes. “Quidditch mad. He will be, won’t he?”

Salazar smiles. “For flight? Most certainly, but some things should remain pleasant possibilities, else what is there to look forward to? Other things…” His smile fades. “Others are not so pleasant.”

James forces himself away from the doorway and joins them at the table. “You don’t know what’s going to become of the house after You-Know-Who explodes, or…or whatever it is that he does.”

Salazar shakes his head. “Not only did Nizar not see this house, or the manor, he had no idea that either existed.”

“Albus was really going to do it, just like Harry thought in that Pensieve memory,” James says. “Lily’s right, isn’t she? It isn’t just about this coming Hallowe’en night. Albus was going to let You-Know-Who kill our son just for the sake of that stupid prophecy.”

Lily clenches her fists, feeling her blunt fingernails pressing into her palms. At least she doesn’t have to convince him. James had always been more fond of Albus than Lily. James isn’t angry about this betrayal yet, but he will be.

“If you do not tell a young man of what he will inherit, or allow him to plan for the future he may have…” Salazar glances away for a moment. This is as hard for him as it is for them, and Lily has no idea why that makes this easier to bear. Not much—not by a long shot will this ever, ever be okay. But it still helps.

“We _are_ going to plan for it, though,” James insists. “If Harry—Nizar—no, I can’t. I know what comes later and I’ll be okay with it, eventually, but right now, my son is right out there in the back garden, Sal. That’s Harry.”

“Believe me when I say that I understand, and it isn’t an insult to anyone to continue to think of him that way. That _is_ who he is, right now, and it would be cruel to ask you to ever consider otherwise.” Salazar’s eyes flicker towards the window when he sees movement, but it’s just Dragon jumping up onto the windowsill to keep a better feline eye on things. “I told you to plan for the worst when it came to the manor. You should do so here, as well. That rebounding curse might do nothing more than cause You-Know-Who to lose his physical body…or it might destroy half of this cottage. The result varies, and we’ve no idea what those result will be.”

“Dammit.” James scrubs at his face. “I don’t want to see this house destroyed. And even if it’s just partial damage, there’s nothing we can do to fix it, is there? Not for years.”

“Not for years,” Salazar repeats in agreement. “Everything in Monty’s library is safe to pack up without any subterfuge needed, at least.”

“Because anyone who comes here after Hallowe’en, they’ll expect to find that we have a guest room for whenever Sirius visited,” Lily realizes. “And you, Robert, and Jewel will need a place to rest, anyway.”

Salazar inclines his head. “That would be a kindness, though your sofa is currently more comfortable than my own.”

“We can send your jewelry to Gringotts, along with a few other things,” James says to Lily. “It’s war. That’s the sort of thing you’d expect a family to do, and we really should have done it already.”

“We still don’t have an owl to send that kind of message to Gringotts in the first place,” Lily points out. “I’m definitely not going to entrust _Peter_ with that kind of thing.”

“That will not be a problem as of tomorrow.” Salazar twists his hand in a gesture that resembles someone snapping their fingers. The result isn’t a snap, but a folded piece of paper that appears between his thumb and forefinger. When James reaches for it, Salazar draws his hand away, one eyebrow raised. “Think like a bloody Auror. Better yet, think like a spy.”

Lily bites back a smile. “At least I didn’t go grabbing for whatever that is.”

“That is because your parents raised you with manners that took root. I’m despairing of your husband,” Salazar replies. “Do you have any idea how long contact poisons have existed?”

James sighs. “A while. Yeah, that was stupid. Never just take something from another wizard unless they’re family.”

“Robert would be the first to tell you that family is not a guarantee,” Salazar says in quiet reminder. He releases his hold on the paper after James properly checks it.

Lily leans against James’s shoulder so she can read whatever they’ve just been given. “I didn’t know you could hire the services of an Owl Post bird.” Even if she had known, it wouldn’t have done her much good. She couldn’t afford to hire a bird at these rates during her summers away from Hogwarts, not as a kid.

“I think I used to know about this, but we had Nerys for so long that I forgot about it. Then we had Sirius’s owl, for a little while, and then…everything happened so fast when the prophecy was revealed that I never thought to get another,” James says. “I asked Peter twice to get us one, and he always claimed Diagon was cleared out of owls each time he checked because of the Ministry’s war needs. I never once thought that he might be lying.”

“Neither did I,” Lily murmurs, because that isn’t just James’s guilt alone to bear. “Wait—this is a form for an owl that’s already contracted and paid for in our names through the end of November.”

“I did say it would no longer be a problem after tomorrow.”

“Right.” James folds the letter and tucks it away in his pocket. “Thank you. I guess now it’s everything _else_ that’s just…it makes me glad that I got a lot better at Transfiguration after I figured out how to be a bloody Animagus.”

“Copies.” Salazar looks approving. “Myself and Robert will bring items here that can be Transfigured to take the place of whatever you choose to preserve. Those items can then be stored in the Willow House, if the idea does not offend.”

James nods. “That’s probably the best place for it all. I mean, we’ll still need furniture later, right?”

Lily thinks about setting up some new place to live, one that doesn’t have Harry in it, and starts to cry. She waves off words of comfort while accepting James’s handkerchief. “It’s okay. I mean, I’m okay. I’m just—”

“Grieving,” Salazar finishes for her. “There is no shame in it, even if you’re grieving something that hasn’t yet happened.”

James swallows. “You’d know, right? You had from 1017 to 1039 to grieve leaving Hogwarts behind.”

“I did, though I didn’t know I would be leaving my wife behind until her unexpected death. Losing Marion made it so much harder to depart. But that isn’t the only time I’ve experienced such a thing.” Salazar gets up from the table long enough to claim the last of the morning coffee. He’s considerate enough to set another pot to brew, and talks while he does so. “My last wife. Isis. We had been together for fifty years when she fell ill. It wasn’t a sickness, but the failing of a body that had decided ninety years of life in this world was quite enough. We both knew it; she was an amazing magician, and I’m a bloody Seer. I was grieving her loss while she was still lying in bed next to me. My only consolation at the time was that Isis passed in her sleep, taken by Death’s hand while she was dreaming.”

Salazar turns around, and his gaze is like a raw wound. “The only consolation I have for you is a portrait who was last updated on thirtieth October in 1017, one who has the recorded memories of a man who was certain that he would rather you live. Nizar didn’t ask me to attempt any of this until the eve of Samhain in 1039, but the thoughts were already drifting through my brother’s head. You would then have to trust that my translation is true.”

That sounds ominous. “Translation?” Lily asks.

“The portrait was painted in the summer of 992, and it was meant to hang in Hogewáþ,” Salazar explains. “The castle’s magic fuels and Preserves everything within her halls, which would have included that painting had it remained behind. The magic of the Willow House, the family home in Gipuzkoa, and other magical places I’ve lived in have done their best to make up for that lack, but several years ago, the portrait’s magic began to deteriorate. The portrait noticed the problem when he tried to retrieve the memory of an ancient potion for the easing of lycanthropy and discovered it gone, among other useful memories of things I no longer recall how to do. Language deterioration accompanied it. By switching over to speaking only Parseltongue, a _magical_ tongue, it halted the painting’s deterioration so that no other recorded memory, original or otherwise, would be lost. However, Nizar’s portrait does know British Sign Language. We learnt it so that the Underground would have another means of communicating with his painting if there was need.”

“Oh.” Lily takes James’s hand on instinct. “I don’t know BSL. I’ve seen it used, but…”

“I know the concept, but I’ve never seen it,” James adds. “But if you know it, then so does Robert and Jewel.”

“They do.” The corner of Salazar’s mouth turns up. “And now you’re wishing to know why Regulus is Robert, but Jewel’s name is still her own.”

“I was kind of wondering about that right then, yes,” James admits. “How did you know?”

“Your Mind Magic is excellent, but you have no poker face to speak of,” Salazar responds dryly. “Jewel is very much a law unto herself in certain matters. She never slips in regards to another’s name while spying, so it seemed a pointless argument to make. Besides, unlike the others, she has little interest in learning of the non-magical world.”

“But we _are_ going to meet that painting. The one from the Willow House.” Lily wants to be certain, wants to hear that reassurance again. After Hallowe’en, a painting from the year 992 may be the only thing she knows of her son for the next fourteen years.

“Yes.” Salazar glances at the back garden again. “But it should wait until you’ve a room the little one doesn’t venture into, as that is where such a painting should go. Even portraits can be disconcerted by what they witness.”

* * * *

James stands in his dad’s old library, turning in a slow circle as he tries to take in every detail. He’ll be able to use Occlumency to pull up the memory later and view it as much as he wants, maybe even put it in a Pensieve, but right now is the last time he’ll be looking at the real thing.

Lily comes back with a basket crammed full of the shrunken crates they’d used to pack up her parents’ house after Jane died. “Sal volunteered to feed Harry his lunch. I told him to take breakfast as a warning and use a Shield Charm. Do you think these will be enough to hold everything in here?”

James nods. “As long as you shrink down everything that’s safe to use a Shrinking Charm on, we’ll have plenty of room. We’ll need them, anyway. Anything going to Gringotts should be packed already, or they’ll charge us for the job.” It’s not that James would mind paying the charge so much as it irritates the shit out of the goblins when you hand them extra work, especially if it wasn’t mentioned in the original request.

“You can cast Shrinking Charms, James Potter.”

James watches as she puts the basket down on a side table, removing only a single crate to unshrink. “I can, but we both know which of us is better at Charms. I don’t want to—I don’t want to botch it, or shrink something that was never meant to be charmed.”

Lily puts down the crate, walks over, and wraps her arms around him. “James. Do you want me to pack up this room for you?”

“Would you?” James asks, hating it when his voice cracks. “I mean, I should be able to do this. Shouldn’t I?”

“And exactly how much of Mum’s stuff was I able to pack up before I broke down and sobbed in front of the fireplace?” Lily counters.

“That was…” James stops himself from saying _That was different,_ as he’d like for his bollocks to remain attached to his body. “Okay. Then…okay.”

James finds that Harry escaped back out into the garden after his lunch, which looks to have been painted liberally across his high chair tray instead of ending up in his mouth. His shirtfront is coated in drying applesauce and pureed vegetables. “That seems to have gone well.”

Sal is sitting on the back stoop, where Dragon is giving him a suspicious cat glare. “Is it just those of Potter blood who this cat dislikes?”

James remembers how Dragon reacted to Dad and smiles. “Maybe it is.” Then he steps out onto the grass and goes to Harry.

Harry looks up at him and asks, “Pa’fut?”

“The toy, or Dad Two?”

His son wrinkles his forehead. “Daddu.”

James bites his lip before shaking his head. “Sorry, champ. He can’t be here right now, and I miss him, too. But you know what?” He shifts into his Animagus form, which makes Harry gasp before he shrieks out laughter.

 _Yeah, there we go,_ Prongs thinks, lowering himself to the ground so Harry can explore his antlers. It always feels kind of weird, but his son loves Prongs. He also pats really hard, making Prongs wonder how the hell Dragon can stand up to his kid without falling down every time.

Harry giggles again when Prongs deliberately snorts air into his face. Then he grabs Prongs’s nose and starts poking at his nostrils with one curious little finger. In revenge, Prongs reminds Harry that deer have really long tongues and licks his cheek.

Oh, that was a terrible idea. Residue of Smashed Pea is all Prongs can taste now. He turns his head and glares at Sal, because who in their right mind feeds a baby smashed peas?

Sal looks amused. “As if it’s my fault you’ve a limited assortment of jarred baby food.”

Prongs snorts again and starts nosing at Harry’s shirt. There has to be applesauce lingering somewhere that hasn’t already dried and turned into crusty apple glue.


	39. Fictional Facsimile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"We passed upon the stair  
>  We spoke of was and when  
> Although I wasn't there  
> He said I was his friend  
> Which came as some surprise  
> I spoke into his eyes, "I thought you died alone  
> A long long time ago"'_
> 
> -David Bowie, "The Man Who Sold The World"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual props to @norcumii! Fewer props to my brain, which has let my completed-words-buffer sort of go away because it hasn't been in the mood to write. (GAHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.)
> 
> Thank you all for the comments and love <3

_10 th August 1981_

_Dear Padfoot,_

_We have an owl again! It’s by the technicality of hiring one, but it’s still an owl. Wormtail arranged for it, though it’s best not to mention it to him. You know why._

_I’m not re-subscribing to the Daily Prophet, though. I already know we’re at war. I don’t want to know who else died over breakfast every morning. I just worry about you._

_No, we worry about you. Even Harry asked where you were, because he misses his Padfoot._

_The only other people I’d want to hear updates about are…well, you already know. The usual suspects._

_(Don’t you dare take that literally.)_

_I’m sorry this is a short letter, but I wanted to send you something so you’d know about the owl. I hope you have opportunity to write back. Oh, and if you’d have the included film developed and mailed directly to us, we now have a way to receive the photographs directly! Someone has been good about delivering our mail, but it’s much better this way. I don’t spend months wanting to scream about not hearing from anyone._

_My next letter is going to Yorkshire. I’ve missed the Longbottoms terribly. The only thing I know about the new baby is his name! It will be nice to find out more. I’d like to find out how baby Neville spent his first birthday._

_Don’t forget about Diwali. Don’t you dare._

_All our love,_

_Lily, James, & Harry_

Salazar looks as if he wants to slap himself in the face. “You invited Sirius Black to this house? Three days before Hallowe’en?” Left unspoken is the implied question: _Are you entirely mad?_

“I did it while everything was locked up in a box!” James retorts, while Lily watches in amusement. “And unlike how I wanted to agree with Sirius when he said he wanted to tell the war to bugger off and stay here, I didn’t get magic-slapped for it!”

Lily takes note of how Salazar immediately straightens. “It isn’t just me. It’s awareness of historical foreknowledge that causes it,” he says.

“I’d wondered,” Lily mutters, because she had. James really had gone briefly cross-eyed, he’d been magic-slapped so hard in warning. “When we reminded Sirius about Diwali before he left the morning after Harry’s birthday, I didn’t feel it, either.”

“But oh, hell, did I nearly panic when Sirius mentioned his being here on Hallowe’en itself,” James whispers. “That was—I didn’t even know why, what with everything still in that Legilimency box, but it wasn’t right.”

“Alas that he will be here on Hallowe’en, then,” Salazar comments, but his gaze is flickering back and forth between James and Lily. “You want to tell him, don’t you?”

“It isn’t fair _not_ to,” Lily says when James just stands there, silent and statue-like, too upset to speak. “We know from those Pensieve memories that a Deflection Charm exists. We’ve talked it over, and we’re not getting magic-slapped for that idea, either. Maybe Sirius is supposed to know.”

Salazar rubs at his jaw with one hand. “A Deflection Charm only works when the one it’s being cast upon is willing to bear it. What if Sirius Black refuses to do so?”

Lily swallows. “Then, as much as I’ll hate it afterwards, I’ll Obliviate him.”

“I admire your willingness to safeguard both your spouse and yourselves, but no.” Salazar shakes his head. “That is cruelty, and I’ll not see it done. Let myself, Jewel, or Robert Obliviate him, if it comes to that. Not you, not James. Obliviating your own spouse may well invalidate your magically recognized marriage vows, and I doubt you wish for that.”

“Shit,” James whispers. “I didn’t even think of that.”

Lily feels a cold rock drop into her stomach. She hadn’t thought of it, either.

“I’m glad it was discussed, then,” Salazar says. “What do you think Sirius Black will do, when faced with that choice?”

“It’s for Harry,” James responds. “If Sirius knows that we’re doing this to keep him safe—to keep _all_ of us safe—Sirius would tell us to hurry up and cast the charm already.”

* * * *

_12 th August 1981_

_Dear Lily ( & James, who is Bad at Writing Letters, You Miserable Excuse for a Proper Pure-blood Wanker)_

_Waking up to an owl this morning was terrifying, because they’re faster than the Prophet of late for finding out who’s dead and who isn’t. Discovering a letter with your handwriting on it, darling, was the best sort of relief I’ve had aside from Harry’s birthday._

_And aside from wanking._

_No, I’m not sorry I wrote that, and I’m currently too far away to be slapped. Don’t send a Howler, either. You’ll scare the neighbors. I think they’re still angry about the no-dog-here incident, since they never found a dog to prove we had one after I shifted while drinking and got very loud. I’m almost sorry for that one, at least, but I think these people would attempt actual revenge if a Howler turned up. The sound-proofing charms might not be enough, and that’s your work we’re talking about, Lily._

_No, I’m not going to forget Diwali. It’s something to look forward to when everything else is shite. I won’t bring our kid another broom, either. Harry only gets one broom at a time, which is entirely sensible, thank you._

_The pictures are dropped off, and now they know to send them to you by way of Owl Post. Good job on getting the confidentiality attachment added to this owl’s contract, too, and of course I checked! I’m a Black, I’m paranoid, and if it hadn’t already been done, I was going to charm the blazes out of an owl to make certain of it._

_Molly had a girl on 11 th August. I think she’s going to have her mother’s eyes. Arthur and Molly named her Ginevra Molly, sort of sideways after Molly’s mother Geneva. Arthur insisted on adding Molly. Little Ginny is a healthy baby girl, and probably signals the end of whoever the hell cursed the Weasleys a few generations back. At least Molly and Arthur’s kids will have some guesswork ahead of them if they have their own kids, one day._

_I’m babbling in a letter. This is a new low for me. I miss all three of you like the world is on fire. I even miss that blasted cat_.

_Love,_

_Sirius_

* * * *

James watches Harry throughout August, thinking that his son is never going to get over the fact that there are people in the house again who aren’t just Mum and Dad. He understands how Harry feels; James still can’t get over how odd it is to have other people around, every day, and he’s the bloody adult!

Having Sal visit so often, nearly every day, is strange because it’s comforting. It’s like a memory that hovers just out of reach in the back of James’s head—which is odd, because Sal most often turns up in Muggle t-shirts, denims, boots, and his black leather jacket instead of Wizarding robes. That comfortable familiarity drives James mental until he finally gives in and asks Sal, who tells James that he visited the manor often until the infamous back-garden-exploding incident. That didn’t happen until James was nineteen months old, so…yeah. That would explain a lot.

“Why not afterwards?” James asks after Sal explains _why_ the back garden became a temporary crater. (He hopes someone took a photograph of that afterwards, one that James will find one day buried in the family paperwork.) “I can remember things from when I was around two years old or so, and you weren’t one of those things.”

“Because none of us knew if anyone was going to repeat another nuclear experiment on the scale of Tsar Bomba,” Sal replies. He’s flipping through Lily’s notes on Gran’s curse-healing potion, which at one point involved a lot of shouting about platinum cauldrons and metaphysical alignment properties that went right over James’s head. He’s so glad a standard Auror only ever has to deal with identifying basic potions and poisons, along with keeping to the golden rule of _When In Doubt, DO NOT TOUCH_. If James had taken Slughorn’s N.E.W.T. Potions class, he might have accidentally poisoned everyone in the classroom.

Harry stopped chewing on his mum’s notes after Sal hissed at him. Now he’s just watching Sal write with a Muggle biro in a spiral-bound notebook with rapt baby fascination.

“Did they ever repeat anything like that Tsar Bomba nonsense?”

“Fortunately not. They did, however, put proof to the idea that one can become accustomed to anything.” Sal glares at Lily’s notes, mutters something about quills and penmanship, and starts writing again. “They have not exactly stopped setting off nuclear devices.”

“They haven’t?” James asks in disbelief.

“Eleven so far this year in the United States,” Sal says. “Twenty-one within the bounds of the Soviet Union. Eight in the islands of French Polynesia. If I pay attention, I’m aware of them, but they no longer leave me ill and struggling. The first nuclear test was a terrible shock for an Earth-Speaker. Nagasaki and Hiroshima left me unconscious for nearly a month.”

“You know, people who support the International Statute of Secrecy would point to things like that as the reason why the Statute should always exist.”

Sal glances up from his work, though he also reaches out without looking and retrieves his spare biro from Harry before he can start chewing on it. “If magicians were given such power, they would be just as foolish as those they seek to separate themselves from. Worse, perhaps, demonstrated in the fact that so many were quick to forget the lessons of the European Wizarding War. A mere twenty-six years later, Wizarding Britain is once again at war, and for the same reason, no less. You’ve no idea how many magicians I’ve wanted to strangle for fighting against Grindelwald in 1945, returning home, and then fighting _for_ You-Know-Who as of 1971.”

“I’d believe it,” James says. He heard Granddad go off about the Wizengamot’s stupidity often enough. “You know, you’ve mostly stopped using witch and wizard. Muggle, too.”

“I switched to using those terms during You-Know-Who’s rise to power because I spent the majority of my time around others who used those terms. I had no wish to make an amateurish mistake.” Sal glares at his notes. “Why that apple? I cannot figure out that bloody apple! Silver, bronze, and platinum were annoyances enough of their own, but at least I understand their purpose!”

“Magician and Muggle, Sal,” James says in reminder. He listened to Lily growl at her Potions textbook often enough during sixth and seventh year to understand the distraction. When it wasn’t Lily growling at Potions, it was Sirius turning the air blue about his shite Alchemy textbook and Professor Viridian’s inability to teach a class while sober.

“Muggle is an insult, even if I don’t recall what it means. Muggle may not sound as if it is on a par with Mudblood, but an insult it remains, and the older insult, at that. Non-magical was our preference, when we were not simply referring to others as people. Magician is a non-gendered term, as I despise Britain’s insistence on erasing other genders.”

James frowns. “Wizarding Britain recognizes more than two genders.”

“And yet, someone who is not a woman or a man still must refer to themselves as a witch or a wizard, thus denoting themselves female or male,” Sal counters. “Bailey is grateful that Wizarding Britain did not march so far backwards that they forgot those who are transgender.”

“I don’t know that word.”

“It’s a recent coining, I believe, but transgender is a term for one who is like Bailey—physically they were born to resemble one gender, but that is not who they really are,” Salazar explains.

“Do you miss teaching?” James finds himself asking. “I don’t mean teaching people how to spy. I mean in terms of classrooms and kids.”

Sal closes his notebook, using his biro to mark the page. “It’s been a few centuries since I taught young ones. I’m not certain if I’m capable of it any longer.”

James privately doubts that. Sal sounds more like someone who thinks they’re out of practice, and suffering a bad case of nerves for it. “Speaking of words, you never call Harry by his name.”

Harry immediately perks up and beams because someone is talking about him. James ruffles his son’s hair and puts stuffed Padfoot into his hands so he’ll (maybe) stop trying to filch himself a biro.

“I can’t say it properly without a great deal of effort and practice directly beforehand,” Sal responds. “I didn’t want to confuse him with a persistent habit, one that remains stubbornly unaffected by time.”

Robert isn’t around much, so James is kind of stuck not getting to know his brother-in-law as well as he’d like. That means Harry isn’t getting much of a chance to get to know his uncle, either. The moment James realizes he’s been monopolizing the attention of someone he’ll still be able to speak with after Hallowe’en, he backs off and allows Harry to wrap Robert Black around his little finger. It’s just as hilarious to watch as he thought it would be.

Robert is walking around in the back garden, Harry on his back, babbling and probably hissing for his new mount to go faster. “So, I have no idea how this happened,” Robert says as he starts on yet another roundabout tour of the garden, “but it’s apparently something I’m doing now.”

“Pa’fut oo!” Harry crows.

Lily leans against James in the kitchen doorway, watching the spectacle. “Have you told Robert that Harry is used to riding actual Padfoot around the back garden?”

“Nope.”

“Then Robert has no idea that Harry is putting truth to him being Padfoot Two.” Lily smiles. “Robert’s been outmaneuvered by an infant.”

“That’s my little Marauder son, using his powers for good. Or at the very least, using them to get free piggyback rides.”

Those frequent absences cause James to belatedly realize what Sal had been implying a few days ago. Robert is gone so often because he’s taken on a lot of the Voldemort Court-spying duties that Sal had previously performed. “Bailey and I are the only ones aside from Saul who can really get a read on Pettigrew,” Robert explains when James asks. “Not because Pettigrew is good at Occlumency—he’s complete shit at it, especially for a Pure-blood—but because we’re the ones with the right Legilimency training to dig out secrets the Dark Lord helps Pettigrew to hide in his head, even if he’s hiding those secrets from himself.”

“There’s more?” James asks, feeling ill.

Robert glances up from the cauldron he’s using. They need so much Polyjuice between now and Hallowe’en, and Lily is already so sick of stewing the first part of the potion that she threatened to kick her cauldron through the basement wall. Nobody wants that, if only because James is certain she’d succeed and the wall doesn’t deserve her wrath. Robert found extra cauldrons and set up three more Polyjuice-in-progress stations. The most frustrating element of making so much Polyjuice isn’t the actual brewing, but stewing knotgrass, leeches, and lacewing flies for twenty-one lunar days beforehand. That’s one of the reasons James was never really interested in Potions, because he is _not_ that patient.

Sal is apparently doing the same as Robert, but only during his time at the Willow House. He doesn’t want Lily to feel like her basement brewing area has been invaded, especially when she already feels like it’s been taken over by cauldronfuls of future Polyjuice. It’s probably frustrating for Sal that the Underground still needs fresh batches of the potion, too. James and Lily aren’t exactly being handed a list of members and names, but Sal admitted that eleven people need Polyjuice to spy.

Lily let out a pathetic whimper at the idea of brewing that much Polyjuice. The amount they need for just one person for two months is insane; James can’t imagine how much Polyjuice eleven people would need to get through a week, and the Underground has been doing this shit for _years_ now.

“There aren’t any other major secrets at the moment, but…” Robert frowns, checks the heat below the third cauldron, which has been simmering for a full week now, and does something to adjust it. “If anything changes, we need to know. If the Dark Lord decided to show up in the middle of the afternoon instead of waiting until nightfall on Hallowe’en, for example, Pettigrew is the first person who would know.”

“Because he has to be here.” James nods, swallowing back the stinging knot of grief and betrayal he’s still working to get past. Maybe he never will. “You and Sirius have the same expression when you don’t want to talk about something.”

Robert stares at him. “We do?”

“Congrats; you’ve got something else in common with Sirius aside from a fucked-up family,” James says. “That isn’t the only reason you’re getting Peter pissed and hitting him with Legilimency.”

“No,” Robert admits, grimacing. “Pettigrew is allowed to attend meetings of the Innermost Circle. After the recent shifts in membership, he’s our only easily accessible means of finding out what the hell is going on. Most of it isn’t pretty.”

“It’s not like I’m expecting You-Know-Who to suddenly start hosting children’s birthday parties, Robert. How bad is it?”

“Individual strikes are being performed by groups composed of members solely from the Innermost Circle, minus the Order’s spy. Severus is being held in reserve for the work of weaponizing the sorts of potions that should _never_ be weaponized in the first place. He’s delaying progress on that project as much as he can without drawing suspicion, but he’s _good_ at what he does. He wouldn’t be able to fake a few brewing difficulties for much longer. To help slow that project, some of us have conveniently made certain ingredients disappear.”

James grins. “You’ve stolen them.”

“I like to think of it as long-term borrowing,” Robert replies. “Those of us with the means might also have gone to the trouble of buying out said ingredients stored in every apothecary in Great Britain, Ireland, and Europe. Severus now _can’t_ finish any of those weaponization projects before Hallowe’en. He is occupied with researching alternatives while the Dark Lord uses Legilimency on anyone who will hold still long enough, hoping to find the saboteur and do away with them.”

“If that puts you in danger—”

Robert shakes his head. “The only members of the Underground allowed in that man’s presence right now all have masteries in Mind Magic—Legilimency and Occlumency. I like the old term better. It used to confuse me as a kid, wondering why they were considered two different branches of magic when they’re so intertwined.”

“My grandmother shared your opinion. She would use the Western terms so I knew them, but she considered Occlumency and Legilimency to be the same kind of magic.”

“Well, the one-thousand-year-old Founder says your grandmother was right, so I’m going with that.” Robert checks on the first cauldron again, stirring it once with a glass rod before he looks satisfied that the glop is stewing itself properly.

“Back to the point, though. Wizarding Britain is terrified, James,” Robert says bluntly. “Families are being chosen at random to receive a visit from groups like the Lestranges. Cousin Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Rabastan tend to play with their toys, which isn’t doing St. Mungo’s any favors. If not them, it’s Amora Goyle, Gamelinus Rowle, Theodore Nott, and Avery Junior, and that result is always more funerals. The lucky ones see Augustus Rookwood, Selwyn Junior, Lucius Malfoy, and Obsidian Rothschild turning up on their doorstep. At least with those idiots, people stand a chance of fighting back. Sometimes Pettigrew knows about the strikes before they happen, and we can do something about it. Most of the time we’re reading about them in the _Daily Prophet_ afterwards.”

James knew about most of that by some really swift osmosis, but he made Auror for a reason. A leased owl tied to the cottage’s Fidelius Charm means they can get the _Daily Prophet_ again. Lily argued with him about the subscription, but gave in when James said he needed to see it. She leaves the room whenever James unties the morning newspaper before its headlines can be revealed.

Reading the _Prophet_ every morning grants James a lot of information about the state of the war based on what the newspaper does print, what they won’t print, and by the notices littering the back of the newspaper. It’s like Amfractus Macmillan is stupid enough to believe that placing Wizarding community notices behind the news and fluff means no one will pay attention to how many deaths and obituaries are populating those pages.

It’s why James says, “There’s something else you’re not telling me, Regulus, and you think it’s personal.”

“Robert,” is his idle correction, but Robert stops paying attention to the cauldrons and rests both hands on the workbench. “You’re good at reading people. Nice to know.”

“Robert!”

“It is personal, at least for you,” Robert says, and gives in. “Lyall Lupin was one of their targets. The Dark Lord was _keeping his promise_ to protect the werewolf packs from the vengeful wizard hunting for Greyback. We didn’t know until Lupin was killed last night.”

“Oh. Oh, shit,” James whispers. “If Remus is still spying on the werewolf packs…”

“Then he either found out because they started celebrating around him, or he doesn’t know yet because he can’t receive the newspaper where he’s staying,” Robert says. “Remus is one of _many_ who’ve lost family this summer. Like I said: people are terrified.”

James was going to write to Sirius, but instead, a letter to Remus becomes the first personal correspondence he sends using the hired owl. He hopes he doesn’t get so distracted that it’s the last. He just—he’d prefer it if he was writing to Remus for a better reason, in safer circumstances. James can’t even sign his name to the letter he sends, so he resorts to some of their old Marauder codes, personalizing the letter as much as he can before erasing any magical traces of himself or the cottage from the paper. Sal gives James a spare clipping from the _Prophet_ about Lyall Lupin’s death that he includes with the letter, just in case Remus doesn’t have one. After thinking it over, James adds the Marauder code they once used to ask each other if they needed help. Remus would probably rather set himself on fire than admit to needing assistance, but James isn’t going to send a letter like this and not make the offer.

“Do you think Eglantine will arrange Lyall’s funeral?” Lily asks, late that night when neither of them can sleep. Peter is now the only one of them who still has living parents, which is so fucking unfair that James wants to scream.

“Most likely. I hope she was able to tell him, that Remus can be there for it,” James says, but he has a bad feeling that Remus’s grandmother couldn’t reach him. He’s not even certain their nameless postal owl will be up to the challenge. Either way, he doesn’t expect to receive a response for a day or five. It’s kind of a relief. They won’t be receiving the rest of their post, either, and now that he’s been reading the _Prophet_ on the regular again…really, James is fine with that.

On Saturday, fifteenth August, James gets a response to his Gringotts letter in the form of a goblin Apparating into his parlor. James nearly hexes the suited goblin until his brain gets with the program. “Sorry.” He didn’t even know goblins weren’t affected by Fidelius Charms, but as his swot wife would point out, they’re Green Folk, and James invited them. One of them, anyway.

James puts his wand away and does a better job of being a decent host. “I really do apologize. The war has everyone on edge. I’m James Potter.”

“I know who you are, Mister Potter.” The goblin gives James a glaring examination before straightening his waistcoat. “I am Gishillish, and have been handling your family’s vaults and accounts for the past century. I understand you have items you wish to have stored in the primary Potter family vault?”

“I do.” James Summons two sealed crates, which appeases Gishillish’s temper when the goblin sees he won’t need to pack anything himself. “I also have paperwork to submit, and would appreciate if you would review it for accuracy before signing. Yes, I’ll pay the fee for the legal review,” he adds before it can be mentioned. “And the extra fees for filing copies of the pertinent documents with the Ministry of Magic.”

“Very good, Mister Potter.” Gishillish waits until James hands over all four scrolls. Then he sits down on the coffee table, uncaring of the books he shoves aside to do so, and reads through all the scrolls at a goblin’s typical rapid speed.

James once dreamed of taking his son to Diagon Alley after the war ended. From there it would be on to Hogsmeade, and all of the tiny Wizarding communities that hide in plain sight throughout Britain and Ireland. He’d wanted to show Harry all the wonders of their world, and now that dream is dust. If James can’t have that dream, then he’ll settle for ensuring that Harry can take care of himself, that he’ll be as secure as a pile of gold can make someone in Wizarding Britain.

He isn’t taking any chances, though. If the worst happens to all of them, Sirius can also inherit the Potter family vaults. Anyone born of Fleamont Potter’s lineage who survives the war is eligible to inherit if Harry or Sirius can’t, and that might one day again include James himself.

Granted, the goblins might not give a damn that James and Lily will be pretending to be dead after Hallowe’en. They live and work by their own rules. Robert already mentioned that he still has access to his vault, even if he can’t access the primary Black family vault while it’s controlled by Pollux Black.

“I see that we have an updated last will and testament for James Henry Potter, and an updated last will and testament for Lily Juniper Evans Black Potter, both properly signed and dated. The third is an issuance of familial inheritance rights which includes Harry James Potter and any siblings _in potentia_ in regards to the entirety of the Potter fortune and properties, with Lily Juniper Evans Black Potter and/or Sirius Black standing as both beneficiary and executor until said child or potential children come of age. The fourth is a standard request for the creation of a vault for Harry James Potter, the purpose of which is to provide any and all necessary supplies for schooling at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, first term beginning first September 1991, to be used at Harry James Potter’s own discretion—and yes, I see here that his tuition for all seven years is to be paid in advance with funds taken from the primary family vault. There is a subclause on this fourth contract for the creation of further schooling vaults providing any future children sired by yourself or Sirius Orion Black III in partnership with Lily Juniper Evans Black Potter with the same benefits as the first defined schooling vault, including pre-payment of tuition for Hogwarts.” Gishillish adjusts his tiny spectacles. “A second subclause determines that any children of Lily Juniper Evans Black Potter who are not sired by her current spouses are also entitled to schooling vaults, defined in the same manner as above. Such funds are to be taken from Potter Vault Four, for which Madam Black Potter is now the declared primary holder, and who stands to receive its contents in full in the event of a divorce. In the event that her death precedes the death of any acknowledged Potter heirs, said Potter heirs born of her marriage to James Henry Potter will stand to inherit its contents evenly divided between them.”

“That’s all correct, yes.” James would really like it if he didn’t need that second subclause, but the three of them married by law and by magic. If Lily ever has a kid with someone who isn’t James or Sirius, no matter the circumstances, that kid can’t inherit anything from the Potter estate. Old by-laws and magic literally won’t allow it. All James can do is make certain that Lily receives the wedding vault Dad and Mum gave to the three of them, which still holds all the profits from the sale of SleekEasy’s Potions & Balms.

“I see no potential conflicts of interest for the Potter family, your spouses, your descendants, or Gringotts in these documents.” Gishillish sounds pleasantly surprised, making James wonder how many Pure-bloods wander through life without the ability to compose a simple legal document. He knows his Dad was bloody well capable; James got to read through the contract of sale before Dad sold off SleekEasy’s. “Do you have an inventory listing for the contents of the containers you wish to have stored in the primary vault?”

“Oh—yes, sorry, I forgot.” James fishes the other two scrolls out of his opposite robe pocket and hands them over. “List one and list two; the crates are marked with those numbers to avoid confusion.”

He feels a little like he’s betraying the family, sending these crates to Gringotts, which is ridiculous. If anything, James is safeguarding the family treasures, the things that can never be replaced if they’re damaged or lost. All of Gran’s jewelry that James took from the manor that morning is going into the vault. Thankfully, everything she kept in trust for her family after the Jat Lohats were all gone is already safe at the bank. All of Mum’s jewelry, which includes a few ancient Cymru pieces she inherited from her mother and grandmother that never made it into his parents’ vault. Granddad’s collection of pocket watches, some more beaten up than others after seeing service in Europe during the wars. All of Dad’s equipment, tools, books, and research notes on his alchemy projects are being packed away, accompanied by the watch Granddad gave him when he turned seventeen. James hated taking off his own watch to pack away, but it’s a unique piece that others could recognize. That would be a stupid way to get caught out at not being dead.

All of Lily’s jewelry is packed up for safekeeping, her presents from Sirius and James accompanied by the scant pieces she inherited from Jane and Malcolm. James doesn’t really wear jewelry all that often, but even he has cufflinks, tie pins, and cloak pins that should already have been stored in the vault.

Lily cried when she took off her engagement rings for the first time since Sirius and James placed them on her finger. James held the rings in his hand, thinking of the emerald fire and gold sparkle of Albus’s damned Harry-tracking device, and realized he was crying, too.

The only things James and Lily wouldn’t give up to Gringotts are their wedding rings. James is still trying to figure out how to properly copy them, because those are _not_ being left behind on Hallowe’en.

James doesn’t have his family’s wedding rings, though Lily has her parents’ rings. Granddad and Gran had it written into their wills that they were to be buried with their wedding bands, though in Gran’s case, her ring is the only thing resting behind her memorial stone in Chiltern Hills. Dad and Mum, though, were both out of the habit of wearing their wedding rings. Dad had taken to leaving his ring at home because he didn’t want it damaged during the fighting; Mum’s fingers had been aching, making her ring hard to wear. James looked for their rings the morning after they died, but he never found them—he never found a lot of things before they ran out of time. It will be years before James can go back into the manor and confirm it, but Voldemort was there that night when his family was murdered. It wouldn’t be the first time You-Know-Who made off with new trophies for his damned collection.

The tapestry, the wedding gift for the Gryffindor and Slytherin couple who literally began the Potter bloodline, is in the second crate. It also has the two portraits his grandparents and parents had painted in 1978, the ones James has never been able to hang in the house. He’ll want the paintings on the wall, one day, but right now it feels like a kick to the chest when he thinks of taking off their careful wrapping to even _look_ at them. Then there are all the photographs, the documents, and the few paintings in the cottage that are valuable instead of just hideous. Copies of those things are staying here, granting the cottage the appearance of a house lived in by a couple who don’t think their minor knickknacks and clutter are in any danger.

The furniture was the hardest. The sofa in the parlor is two centuries old, and Transfiguring castoff furniture so that it resembles that old hardwood and those velvet cushions was a complete pain in the arse. If the armchairs hadn’t been almost as old, James would have left them behind and not regretted it for a moment. Then it’s the rest of the hardwood furniture, upstairs and down, because most of it is as old as the house. Whenever he finished Transfiguring a new copy, Lily shrank down the original and packed it away.

Some things, like the contents of Dad’s old library, have already gone off to the Willow House. James is not giving up access to a Pensieve, which no one knew he took from the manor except for Sal. The same goes for his grandmother’s collection of cauldrons and brewing implements. Those are Lily’s, and they stay with her. The cassette player, the headphones, the tapes in their box—all of that stays with James, too, or he will stage a fucking revolt.

Gishillish coughs to regain James’s attention. “Everything appears to be in order.” He taps each of the scrolls with one long, claw-tipped finger. “Please verify with me that all signatures, names, dates, and seals are correct, Mister Potter.”

James takes a quick glance at each scroll. He hates how he’s so used to this now. James was tossed off the deep end for learning to be his family’s Head of House while he was already knee-deep in the middle of a war. “Yes. They’re all correct.”

“Very good, Mister Potter.” Gishillish snaps his fingers. All of the scrolls vanish, along with the sealed crates. “In the event of your death, or any other unfortunate circumstances that may leave you unable to perform your duties as Head of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, who should be entrusted with securing the key to Harry James Potter’s schooling vault until he comes of age in 1991?”

James stares at the goblin. Shit. He hadn’t thought of that. “Gringotts can’t do so on Harry’s behalf?”

“Unfortunately not, Mister Potter. The key must be held by a legally appointed guardian.”

“Then…if myself, my wife, or my spouse Sirius Orion Black III are not available, please grant the key to Remus John Lupin to safeguard. He is my son’s official godfather, and will act as Harry’s legal guardian if—if something happens.” James wouldn’t choose anyone else, but he also knows, thanks to a multitude of Pensieve memories, that Harry won’t meet Remus until he’s thirteen years old. Someone else will have taken possession of that key in the meantime in order to deliver it when Harry turns eleven.

James has a dark, _angry_ feeling that he knows exactly who that will be. He isn’t furious with Albus Dumbledore yet, not like Lily is, but James doesn’t think he has much further to go before arriving at Station Furious, and then traveling straight on to Platform Murderous.

“Excellent decision, sir,” Gishillish says, though he probably would have said the same thing even if James had suggested Voldemort as the key holder. “Good day.”

“Good day—never mind,” James mutters when the goblin Disapparates without waiting for a reply.

That’s one of many unpleasant tasks accomplished. There are so many more to go, but at least their first mad week of preparations are complete. After Salazar manages to disperse any lingering hint of recent Transfiguration magic from everything they replaced, the house looks just as it always has, which makes James feel bloody _weird_ about living in his own home. They’ve turned the cottage into what Lily calls a set piece for telly program filming.

Sirius would notice that something in the house has changed, but Sirius is definitely going to have other things on his mind in October. A stranger definitely won’t be able to tell the difference, and that’s what they’re all counting on. Not even Robert realized how much had changed until after he spent an entire evening looking at their fictional facsimile. Then Jewel Burke proves why she’s an excellent spy by gazing at every piece of furniture in the public areas of the house, nudging them just so, putting it all back _exactly_ where the originals had been. That’s helpful, but James is a deer Animagus who notices every single change. Now their cheap Transfigured backdrop for a play that won’t see opening night until Hallowe’en is even creepier than before.

* * * *

Living with Jewel Burke reminds James of the times when Granddad would have a mixed bag of Wizengamot guests in the house. Some of them had been anti-Voldemort; others had been vocally supportive. The tension in the air was always vibrating like taut wires. For the first few days, that’s what it’s like between Jewel, James, and Lily. Jewel Burke often doesn’t know what to make of them, and Lily and James have the same problem.

The only person Jewel thaws for is Harry. She looks after their son often during that first mad week of preparations, and her behavior is so far beyond standard that at first, James thinks she has to be faking it. Jewel never hesitates to speak to Harry or hold him, change him, or feed him. Lily gets over the contrast in Jewel’s behavior first, but she and Jewel have skills in common, things they can discuss as professionals even if they’re not friends. The only thing James has in common with Jewel Burke is that they’re both stuck-up Pure-bloods. By the time Gishillish visits to take possession of everything going into the vault, Harry is lifting his arms for Jewel as often as he does for James and Lily.

Harry hisses at Sal when he wants attention, because he already knows that Sal won’t pick him up. Sal will sit down on the floor with Harry, or sprawl out on the grass in the back garden, but he won’t hold him. Lily asked in annoyed frustration why Sal won’t hold their son, and so far, that is the _only_ question that Sal won’t answer. James doesn’t get it, either, but it doesn’t upset Harry, so he’s willing to let it be.

Their hired owl returns on Friday the twenty-first, loaded down with nearly a week’s worth of newspapers, the post James and Lily had previously been relying on Peter to bring, and one scroll that looks like it was mauled by the giant squid in the Black Lake. James unshrinks the newspapers and puts them aside except for that morning’s screaming headline announcing the arrest of Vincent Goyle and Jerome Bluebell. Both have already claimed they were subjected to the Imperius Curse; both of them come from families with money. Lily looks viciously pleased by the news, though James expects their trials will go absolutely nowhere. Bluebell and Goyle will be back out there soon enough, running amuck with their fellow Death Eaters and killing people with impunity.

Unshrinking their regular mail reveals an absolutely massive pile of correspondence. “Peter wasn’t even bringing us most of our post,” Lily says in a faint voice. She holds up a letter with an Owl Post received-by stamp dated for eighteenth December 1980.

Peter had already been actively sabotaging them, maybe in the hopes that everyone would be too angry to care about Lily and James being murdered by Voldemort on Hallowe’en. Now James has to repair their reputation with a bunch of family friends and allies who are probably seriously pissed off that the Potters have been ignoring them for over a year, _and_ he has to somehow do it without Peter noticing. He hates writing letters as it is, but this isn’t a responsibility he can foist off onto Lily. The personal letters that Lily is already starting to sort out from the family business are one thing, but everyone else needs to hear from the Head of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter.

Shit.

“I’ll take care of Peter in regards to him not recalling he’s meant to be collecting your post,” Robert says, eying the pile with a fellow Pure-blood’s dismay. Robert knows exactly how much effort James is about to expend soothing ruffled feathers. “As for these people not going public…they know you’re in hiding. You and the Longbottoms being in danger from You-Know-Who is honestly the worst-kept secret in Wizarding Britain. Be honest about how difficult it’s been to receive your post. Make up something about how it’s not easy to keep up a household without staff, even if Hogwarts’ house-elves are spoiling you lot rotten. Not that I’m complaining, because overnighting here means that they’re spoiling me, too.”

“Bullshit them, you mean,” James replies.

Robert shrugs. “Certainly. But you’re bullshitting them politely. It’s not as if this lot don’t already speak the language.”

James smiles. His family would’ve liked Robert.

The maybe-squid-battered scroll that James unrolls isn’t dated or signed, but James knows Remus’s handwriting, and worries at how shaky it is. The full moon was last week, but this is the sort of writing James would expect to see from Remus the day afterward, not a full week later.

_I’m all right. I knew, but I couldn’t get away. The packs believe I was hiding from my mad, werewolf-hunting father, and things are too volatile for me to risk much else. I know Gran gave Dad a good service, and she can tell me about it when I get home. Thanks for sending the article. I hope you, the ginger terror, and baby are all okay._

_Don’t trust your Secret Keeper._

James starts swearing, and is still turning the air blue when Sal opens the back door and steps into the kitchen. “Surrounded by letters and newspapers. You’re reminding me of the 1960s right now,” Sal says.

“Read this,” James snaps, thrusting Remus’s scroll at Sal. “I’m not done being angry yet.”

Sal reads it quickly and then re-rolls the scroll. “Which part brought on this sort of reaction?”

“The bit about not trusting our Secret Keeper. He means Sirius, or he would have said something about a rat. Everyone ‘knows’ it’s Sirius, so…” James gnashes his teeth. “I spoke to them on Harry’s birthday. Sirius and Remus both, because they’re daft idiots who are starting to believe the Order’s rumor-mongering bullshit that one of them is the spy! It’s only been three weeks, and Remus already believes it’s Sirius again!”

“Then the opposite is likely also again true, as well,” Sal says quietly. “Sirius Black will believe Remus Lupin to be guilty, and neither will talk to the other out of fear.”

James lifts up his glasses long enough to rub at his eyes in frustration. “Do you think Albus is encouraging this?” When he doesn’t hear an answer, he resettles his glasses and glares at Sal. “Well? Is that a yes or a no?”

Sal taps the rolled scroll against his leg, a minor display of anxiety. Not nerves; James has seen Sal nervous, and he’s steady as stone. Anxiety is different, and everyone is getting anxious as August dwindles down in preparation for becoming September. One month closer to Hallowe’en.

“I trust only Robert, Bailey, and Susan to attend Order meetings now, disguised as those who are unavailable, as Albus Dumbledore’s rude habit of reading the minds of others without their permission has become significantly worse. They have the sort of understanding of Mind Magic that would see him misdirected instead of suspicious, and thus can bring back unaltered intelligence. As of this past week, Remus Lupin is under orders to leave England and attempt to gain the allegiance of the werewolf packs of France. If Sirius Black were not an Auror partially protected from Albus’s authority by the M.L.E., I imagine he would be sent away from Britain for similar reasons.”

James stares at Sal in disbelief. “Remus doesn’t even speak French! What the hell is that supposed to accomplish?”

Sal raises an eyebrow.

“Oh.” His head suddenly hurts from a throbbing headache. “Sending Remus to France gets him away from England. He won’t even be able to read the news on first November unless someone translates it for him. When Remus finds out something happened to us and comes back to England, it’ll already be too late. Albus will have made certain Harry is living with Petunia.” James sits down at the table next to his stacks of mail. “God, _why?_ ”

“Rhetorical?” Sal asks.

James shakes his head. “No. Not this time, anyway.”

“Non-magical families are easier to control. Your own Ministry turns a blind eye to abuses suffered by the non-magical unless it might prove to be an embarrassment for them in the international magical community,” Sal answers. “Albus Dumbledore could use _Tempero_ on the Dursley family to ensure they take in their nephew, Obliviate them, manipulate them, and terrify them, but the Ministry of Magic will not care.”

“And it’s a lot harder to use the Imperius Curse on a werewolf,” James whispers. It’s not impossible, but they’re spell-resistant, like giants, though giants are definitely the top contenders. “If Remus was here and collected Harry, they wouldn’t be living in England. Wales has just enough magical autonomy that Remus could report Albus’s interference and cause a potential incident that the Ministry would have to investigate.”

“If Remus Lupin’s godson was already in his arms when Albus Dumbledore arrived to attempt his manipulations, the wolf would react to a man who was trying to take a part of his Pack from him. He would refuse to have any part of it. But if Remus Lupin goes to Albus Dumbledore without a child, when Albus Dumbledore can already argue that a blood protection exists which must be maintained by Petunia Dursley…”

James feels some ungodly combination of outraged and ill. “That’s why. That’s why Remus wouldn’t fight him for custody of Harry.”

Sal lets out a heavy sigh of regret. “No. He will not.”

* * * *

“The little one is calling Jewel his Other-Mum,” Sal tells James on Sunday. James needs a moment to interpret that; he was busy thinking about Remus’s letter, and about Albus. His parents didn’t trust Albus Dumbledore before they knew anything about Sal, but James trusted Albus from the start. He’s starting to realize he has no idea _why_ he trusted the Headmaster; he just did. Everyone in Gryffindor did. They trusted someone they hardly ever saw. Later, they trusted him because You-Know-Who was afraid of Albus, and Albus was willing to lead the war effort against him, but before that? James draws a blank, and it’s infuriating, because it makes him wonder if Albus used fucking Legilimency on him and _made_ James trust him.

“Other-Mum?” James repeats, glancing over at Harry and Jewel. They’re both sitting on the grass on the other side of Lily’s herb garden. James is sort of baffled by the fact that Jewel is willing to sit on the ground in her expensive robes, but maybe she did that with Octavian, too.

If Jewel ever tried to spout Blood Purity dogma at Harry, James would end this entire mad experiment, but she never does. She treats Harry as who he is—an intelligent baby boy who already has a marked preference for flight, his stuffed Padfoot, and the Muggle music Lily has begun listening to again. The strange and compelling tones of Bowie are floating out of the cottage to linger in the back garden right now. James has even heard Jewel humming along, which is bloody bizarre.

“He’s recognizing Jewel as…” Salazar thinks about it. “It’s hard to discuss these concepts with an infant, even in Parseltongue. If I understand him correctly, your son doesn’t see Jewel as a replacement mother, but he knows that she _is_ a mother. He likes this other mother, so: Other-Mum.”

“That works, I guess.” The goal was for Jewel to establish a bond with Harry, and if Harry is already calling her Other-Mum, then they’re definitely making progress. Sal believes that if Harry loves and believes in Jewel as much as she’s meant to love and believe in him, it will make the sacrificial magic created on Hallowe’en night that much stronger. “How does Jewel feel about all this?”

“She loves him already,” Sal replies, “though I don’t yet think Jewel is ready to admit it, not to us or to herself. She is accustomed to feeling nothing but grief in her heart. Finding something new there will take some getting used to.”

James nods, feeling guilty. Jewel was a Blood Purist, yeah, but Sal just gave James a sudden, sharp reminder that Octavian Burke had been a good man. He’d repeated things about Blood Purity, but Octavian still treated Lily like he’d treat any other Pure-blooded lady, even on the day they all graduated from Hogwarts. Ravenclaw Octavian and Gryffindor James used to hang out in the library together to study in those early school years, both of them just as horrific at Transfiguration and desperately trying to figure out how to get better. Octavian had been witty, smart but not smarmy, and _kind_. Jewel Burke raised a man who was not only kind, but one who was brave enough to speak out against Voldemort.

Merlin, sometimes he is such a complete idiot.

Sal eyes James and nods in recognition of James’s really belated realization. Then he tilts his head, listens to the music, and joins in with the song. His timing is spot-on.

“ _I laughed and shook his hand_

_And made my way back home_

_I searched for form and land_

_For years and years I roamed_

_I gazed a gazely stare, at all the millions here_

_We must have died alone_

_A long long time ago._ ”

“You’re pretty good at that,” James comments, once it becomes clear that Sal isn’t going to continue on with the song’s chorus.

“I’m out of practice,” Sal counters, looking troubled. “Thank you for the compliment, though.”

“What’s wrong?”

Sal leans back, resting his weight on his hands. “Do you know how to see the shine of your own magic?”

“Dad taught me,” James answers, glad that he at least knows what Sal is talking about. He knows Gran’s magic was the golden color of a saffron blossom’s flavorless stigma; Granddad’s and Dad’s was dark green. Mum’s was supposed to be a mixed bronze and pale blue, though he never got to see it. James always thought his would be dark green, too, or maybe blue and bronze like his mum, but the one time he managed a spell powerful enough for it to shine, his magic was the color of new spring grass. The color of Lily’s eyes. “Mine is emerald green.”

Sal doesn’t seem surprised. He holds up his hand; when he concentrates, his eyes light up that same brilliant green just before emerald flames dance along his palm. Silver sparks shoot up from the flames, like someone tossed bits of molten metal into a fire. “Does it look familiar?”

“Everything is the same except for the silver sparks,” James says in amazement. He saw similar in the Pensieve, but this is happening right before his eyes. “What are those?”

“The silver is the magic of my mother’s family, the House of Wise Women of Castile,” Sal replies. “The green flame is the magic of my father’s line, the Ancient House of Serpents of Euskal Herria. You and your son were both born under the nakshatra Uttara Bhadrapada.”

James frowns, wondering why Sal brought up his birth star. “Yeah, I knew that. Gran told me.”

“Uttara Bhadrapada is overseen by Ahir Budhnya, the serpent guardian.” Sal clenches his fist, snuffing out the green flame and silver sparks. “There are no coincidences, James. I learned that lesson a very long time ago.”

“Okay…I’m getting kind of worried, here,” James says. “Seriously, what’s wrong?”

“We’ve discussed the protective magic that will add its own golden shine to your son’s magic?” Sal shakes his head. “Jewel’s magic, when she was finally able to show it to me, is gold—but it is not the right shade of gold. I worry that I’ve made the wrong choice in allowing her to sacrifice herself this way.”

“Shit.” James blinks a few times, glancing across the yard. Harry is laughing at the colored bubbles Jewel is producing with her wand. She keeps teasing him into identifying each color so Harry can “bribe” her into making the next set of bubbles a new color. “Does magic ever, I dunno, combine colors?”

“Not often, not that I have seen, but magic will often do as it wants.” Sal turns his head to look at him. “Why?”

“Because I’ve seen what Harry’s magic looks like—we saw it when he was only a few months old,” James says. “It’s emerald with a gold shine to it.”

Sal sits upright, staring at him. “An infant might display accidental magic, but it’s rare that a child that young will demonstrate their strength by outbursts strong enough to reveal a color!”

“It wasn’t that,” James hurries to explain. “Albus has some kind of Harry-detecting device that he built—”

“Albus Dumbledore has a _what?_ ”

James has to show the memory of Albus’s creepy tracking device to Sal with the Pensieve. Sal stalks around the kitchen table in James’s memory, watching as Albus demonstrates his weird contraption. A drop of blood from Lily means that it always shines light purple, like pale English violets, at the start. The drop of blood Albus took from Harry then represents him, emerald edged in gold.

Sal makes that peculiar gesture that freezes a Pensieve memory. “That isn’t the same color, either.”

James has no idea what Sal is seeing that he isn’t, but it must be that peculiar eyesight thing. To James, the gold part of his son’s magic he saw in Salazar’s memories is the same color as it is in _this_ memory. “If they blended, this gold and Jewel’s magic…would it be the same color that you remember?”

Sal releases his hold on the Pensieve memory, letting it play out Albus’s reassurances that his Harry-Detector will be able to find Harry anywhere in the world. “Perhaps,” Sal murmurs. “Maybe this was the way it was always meant to be.”

“That’s kind of depressing,” James says.

“I’d prefer no one need die, but James—the gold you see in this memory is not caused by any sacrifice, not yet. That is the result of an alchemical gift that Henry, Elizabetha, Monty, and Euphemia gave to Lily before she spoke her marriage vows to you and to Sirius Black.”

James hopes he isn’t gaping as stupidly as it feels like. “They did what?”

“They literally figured out how to use brewing, magic, and alchemy to craft a potion that will not only grant the protection of health and wellness made from their imbued love to your son, but to every child Lily will bear. This is the symbol of one of their greatest gifts to you, James. This is not sadness; this is joy.”

James swallows hard. “Oh. Then—then Jewel—”

“Jewel’s love, the sacrifice she makes while shouting defiance at You-Know-Who, will not be a separate element. One sacrifice granted in love will join a magic gifted in love, and the strength of that combined magic will destroy the Dark Lord to such an extent that he might not even have _thoughts_ of his own for years afterward.”

“Well…Jewel did say that she wanted revenge,” James finally manages.

“And I think she will be well satisfied by what she attains.”


	40. Unforeseen Eventuality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Why,” Salazar asks, “do you not have a telephone? There is electricity in this house, but a phone is beneath you?”_
> 
> _Lily smiles at the teasing expression on his face. “We actually did have a telephone. I, er…happened to it.”_
> 
> _Salazar grins. “Accidental magic while pregnant?”_
> 
> _“Yeah. It was the second week of July last year, everything was stressful, and somehow, a salesman found our unlisted phone number. The moment he asked to speak to the man of the household, I kind of blew up our phone.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beautiful @norcumii and her patience with this long-ass story is an amazing thing to behold. <3
> 
> @mrsstanley lost her mother after a long and shite battle against the Big C during the winter holidays. I don't have all the details because things have been insane for her, but she could use some love sent her way.

By the first week of September, Jewel Burke has left behind the Pure-blood aristocratic façade, revealing the warm woman beneath who raised Octavian to be the man he became. Lily is relieved; it makes everything feel less tense. At least Harry only sulked about the chaos in the household every now and then. He was otherwise happy to be distracted by games, baby lessons in counting or words, and a few bursts of accidental magic. There was also one very much _not_ accidental bit of magic which saw a small brown garden snake enter the house and purposefully find its way up the leg of Robert’s trousers.

“Man, I hope that light fixture can hold his weight,” James says, staring up at the Black sibling currently clinging to Lily’s kitchen ceiling. Harry caught the snake that fell after Robert leapt like a paranoid buck, and is alternatively hissing and cackling at the serpent lounging on his shoulders. Lily didn’t know it was possible for snakes to look so bloody smug.

“It was just a garden snake, Rob!” James calls, grinning.

“And it was in _my_ bloody trousers!” Robert retorts, still bug-eyed. “You try having a snake in _your_ pants!”

Jewel is the one who looks up, one eyebrow raised in dry perfection. “Robert, do we need to have a much belated discussion about the physical differences between boys and girls, and how those differences may or may not apply to your gender?” she asks, and Lily laughs until her stomach hurts.

Okay, now she knows they can do this. Lily might hate it when it’s done, but in the meantime, they’re going to be fine.

On Wednesday, ninth September, Lily wakes up feeling…off. That’s the best word she has to describe the sensation to James, who makes a God-awful joke about turning her on to fix the off problem. Lily laughs, rolls her eyes, and darts out of bed to be the first one into the bathroom.

James made off with Harry while Lily was getting ready for their day, so she walks down the stairs by herself. When she gets to the bottom, she abruptly sits down on the last step. Feeling “off” just became “feeling like something is really, really wrong,” and walking isn’t on the schedule any longer.

Passing out just a moment after that, waking up in her own bed again a few minutes later, is how Lily discovers that she’s pregnant. “You’re sure?” she asks Salazar, who was the one to cast the diagnostic charm.

Salazar looks as shocked as Lily feels. “Very. The magic doesn’t read—no, this one isn’t of my blood. I take it you and Sirius Black had recent opportunity to spend time together.”

“All three of us, thank you,” Lily retorts, and then nearly bursts out laughing. The first thing she thinks of is the expression that would show up on James’s face if someone told him he was pregnant with Sirius’s baby.

Then she nearly bursts into tears, because _she_ is pregnant with Sirius’s baby. Lily has to tell him, and she wants to tell him in person, but if she waits until Diwali, it’s a revelation that will end up buried behind a potential Deflection Charm. She’ll have to tell him in a letter. A _letter_. Nobody should find out that they’re going to be a father by letter.

Lily sniffs and reminds herself that a lot of soldiers during wartime probably found out about their impending children that way. Better that than nothing at all.

James is ecstatic about being Dad Two to Harry’s younger sibling, at least when he isn’t being utterly miserable. “We have to tell him, Lil. Sirius deserves to know.”

“I know,” Lily says, because she desperately wants the same thing. “I’ll let you see the letter. When I write it.”

James flops down on the bed next to her and cuddles in close. “Okay.”

When Jewel makes it back from a brief, necessary visit to Voldemort’s stupid Court, she’s utterly horrified, and lays down the law. If Lily fainted on the stairs, that means she’ll be spending the next few days in bed, no excuses or arguments. Jewel also sits at Lily’s bedside and swears in a way that Lily finds shocking, vicious in telling herself off for not noticing that she was sharing living space with a pregnant woman. “This is what I’m fucking well trained for!”

“Well…I’m glad I’m living with a midwife right now?” Lily offers. This time, she can’t stop the tears. Jewel takes her hand, squeezes it, and promises that she’s going to safeguard _both_ of Lily’s children for as long as she’s capable of doing so. Lily cries harder at the reminder.

Bedrest is dull from the start. Lily sleeps through the first day, when she isn’t alternatively crying or gulping down Blood Restoratives, iron-rich potions to prevent aenemia, and even Los Nueve Reconstituyente, made without the additional ingredients for curing curse damage. No one seems to be in the mood to take any chances with Lily’s health, or the baby’s, and she’s all right with that.

“It tastes so weird on its own.” Lily sniffs back more tears before they start pouring out again. Pregnancy hormones are sodding awful, and she got hit with all of them at once. “It’s like an apple was buggered to death by chamomile and fennel,” she says, and Sal completely loses it laughing.

“I really, truly want to say that isn’t funny.” Jewel is biting her lower lip hard, her eyes watering. “But now I can’t stop picturing it.”

“That poor bloody apple! Done in by fennel stalks!” Sal gasps out, and Lily starts giggling.

Explaining everything to Harry is easier, and so much harder. “Baby?” he asks, pointing at Lily’s stomach while she’s still stuck in bed, living in pyjamas and ready to screech in outrage over the fact that everyone insists on escorting her for every simple trip to the loo.

Lily nods. “Yes, Mum’s going to have another baby.” Explain it like Harry will know, Lily tells herself, because one day, he will. He’ll know, and everything will be so _very_ complicated, but they’ll all be alive to enjoy the awkwardness. She hopes.

Harry is hissing a question, his face all scrunched up in confusion. “Try again, baby boy. Mum still doesn’t understand your new favorite language.”

Her son frowns, points at himself, and then points at Lily’s stomach. “Bih?”

Lily smiles. _Big_. “You smart little man. Don’t worry, pet. You were much, much smaller when it was your turn to be in Mummy’s tummy. Your little sibling is also very, very small right now…like…like a Shrinking Charm!” That’s a good comparison for a baby. Harry’s seen the charm demonstrated often enough lately. “But they’ll grow, and the baby will come out when they’re just the right size. Then they’ll just keep growing, getting bigger, walking around and maybe even flying on a little broom. Just like you, sweetheart.”

Harry pouts and hisses while pointing at her belly. “Will your little sibling speak Parseltongue?” Lily interprets, and Harry nods. “I don’t know, sweetie. I didn’t even know you could do that until your birthday. We’ll just have to wait and see, but Dad Two is your little sibling’s father. I don’t know if Dad Two’s family has ever had any Parselmouths.”

The pout is turning into full-on lip wobble upset. Lily reaches out and tugs until Harry willingly crawls over to be held, chewing on the end of his thumb while large tears roll down his cheeks. “You won’t always be alone, sweetheart. You’re not even the only hissing person in the house right now. Sal is here. Remember?”

Harry brightens a little. “Sa,” he says, the first time he’s ever granted Salazar a name in English.

“That’s right, baby. Sal. And you know what? Sal says that some people can _learn_ Parseltongue,” Lily adds, which makes Harry’s eyes grow huge. “Some people can learn to understand it, even if they can’t speak it. Some people can learn to hear it _and_ speak it. Maybe your future little sibling will be like that, huh?”

Harry is appeased, and Lily is relieved. Then she’s surprised when Harry curls up in the crook of her arm and falls asleep, the first time he’s willingly done so in months. “Oh, sweetheart,” Lily whispers, brushing her lips over his head and tightening her hold. “I wish things could be different. I wish you could grow up with your sibling, but the best I can do is make sure you’re happy with an adopted older brother who loves you just as much as we do.”

Robert checks on her when nobody hears a baby complaining. Lily gives him a quiet thumbs-up and sends him back downstairs. When she wakes up later from her own unexpected nap, Harry is still snoozing, but Salazar is in the room. He’s sitting on the chair that has taken up residence on her side of the bed, but turned it around so he can rest his arms and his chin across the backrest.

“Why,” Salazar asks, “do you not have a telephone? There is electricity in this house, but a phone is beneath you?”

Lily smiles at the teasing expression on his face. “We actually did have a telephone. I, er…happened to it.”

Salazar grins. “Accidental magic while pregnant?”

“Yeah. It was the second week of July last year, everything was stressful, and somehow, a salesman found our unlisted phone number. The moment he asked to speak to _the man of the household_ , I kind of blew up our phone.”

He chuckles. “I blame you not at all. It can be easy to forget that non-magical misogyny is still prevalent after spending so much time in the magical world, and then reality comes along to slap you in the face in reminder.”

“Tell me about it.” Lily shakes her head. “People like Petun—like my sister, they don’t really make things better. I mean, there isn’t anything wrong with being a housewife if you want to be one, but she did it because she still believes that’s what is _proper_ and _normal_ for a married woman. Those aren’t good reasons. That’s just…unhealthy,” she finally says when she can’t think of a better word.

“It is,” Salazar agrees. “What is it you wish to do with your life, then?”

“I have no idea at all,” Lily replies. “But we’re going to be living in the non-magical world after Hallowe’en.” _If we survive,_ she thinks, and hides a shiver. “Maybe I can go to uni and find out.”

“Robert wants to do the same,” Salazar says. “As does Trinity, Susan, Richard, Henry, Cane, Sarah, and Abel. You and James now number among quite a variety of curious swots.”

“Cane and Abel,” Lily repeats, raising an eyebrow.

Salazar’s lips curl up on one side. “They thought it was funny.”

Lily nods, realizing she’s been avoiding the one question she really wants to ask. “Was it stress, the fainting?” She’s been worrying about that for days, and then trying not to worry about it, because that won’t help. She usually makes herself go to sleep before worry and not-worry becomes an awful cycle that dances merrily around with guilt. “I’m not really the fainting type.”

Salazar nods. “Most likely, yes. These are not exactly the most ideal circumstances for a pregnancy. There is no blame to be had,” he adds when Lily’s eyes start to water. “You didn’t know there was a pregnancy to be concerned with. Now you do.”

He then explains, better than any Muggle biology book ever did, that sometimes pregnancies simply don’t succeed. Those failures happen far more often than many would ever think to believe. Salazar tells her that she’s lucky the fetus is a stubborn one, but given who their parents are, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

“You’re certain that the baby’s fine?”

“I swear to it,” Salazar promises. “You need only to take care of yourself, as Jewel calculates that the potential dangers of the first trimester won’t end until the week of Hallowe’en.”

“And I need to remain calm and—” Lily utters a pathetic laugh. “Calm and stress free, even while knowing that You-Know-Who is on his way to murder us all. Sure, that’ll be easy.”

Salazar smiles in understanding. “It is safe for a pregnant woman to consume a weak Calming Draught, but you should reserve its use for when you truly need it. You are trapped in this bed for three days longer, though.” Lily is suddenly staring into the somber face of a teacher. “Your Mind Magic still needs quite a bit of work, and there is no time like the present to begin improving it. Such can also help you to maintain calm, even in the face of terrible adversity.”

Lily sighs and nods. She’s read all of the books in the house so many times since February 1980 that she has them memorized. At least Mind Magic will be something new to do. “All right. Let’s figure out why I’m still fairly miserable at Occlumency, then.”

* * * *

Jewel is standing in the kitchen when a Hogwarts house-elf pops in. “Filky is just being here for the dishes, Madam Burke,” the house-elf says, snapping their fingers.

 _Never irritate the help_ , Jewel reminds herself as every dirty pan, skillet, glass, servingware, and all of the tableware is instantly clean and gleaming. The house-elves have proven invaluable for the Underground, though Jewel would prefer to avoid them. It isn’t a dislike of the creatures themselves so much as their enforced meek and servile behavior. She prefers her servants to have enough free will so as to demonstrate a spine and self-sufficiency.

“Thank you,” Jewel responds, watching as a few more bits of house-elf magic see the kitchen returned to rights. It won’t last, not with an active infant in the household, but the daily cleanings do keep things from becoming unpleasant. “Please do not disturb the Potters in their bedroom. If there is laundry you must retrieve, please Summon it instead of acquiring it by hand.” At least when James went upstairs to check on his family and found them asleep, he sensibly joined them in slumber instead of spending another night pacing the cottage. Jewel was on the verge of Stunning the twitchy idiot just to have a quiet night free of the constant creak of floorboards.

The house-elf nods and Summons the laundry, though not the basket. “Lily Evans was always kind to us house-elves in Hogwarts,” the house-elf whispers, as if afraid Jewel will take offence. “Filky thanks Madam Burke for helping Lily Potter’s family.”

“The person you should be thanking is out in the back garden, sulking.”

The house-elf looks in the direction of the lawn furniture that resides on the patio. “That isn’t being sulking, Madam Burke,” the house-elf says. “That is being sad.” Then the house-elf departs, taking the laundry with them.

Jewel didn’t expect to hear anything of sadness. Given the constant danger the Underground faces, she decides it is her business to know what Saul is feeling sad about.

When Jewel opens the back door, she hears Saul’s voice at once. “Please tell me she suffered. She made Ignatius Prewett suffer enough, and I’m of the opinion that karma should be vengeful.”

Jewel raises an eyebrow and glances down. There is a long white cord that was shut inside the door, right at the corner where it wouldn’t be damaged. That explains things; Saul is speaking on the Muggle telephone. She doesn’t like the device, but its use was easy enough to understand and master. It’s been a safe way for certain members of the Underground to communicate while within the wards of their own homes.

“Thank you for telling me. Yes—it’s bloody tense and dull at all times, that’s what it is. Goodbye, Trinity.” Saul places the handset atop the phone’s cradle, causing the loop of the rotary dial to chime softly. Then the flare of a tiny red ember shines in the darkness. The clouds roll back from the moon, revealing that Saul is slumped in a most unbecoming manner in a patio chair, drawing on a Muggle cigarette.

“Must you?” Jewel asks, circling around the patio to take a seat on the opposite side of the table.

“This is a better option than a Calming Draught at the moment. The draught would be far too strong. The less potent version would not be quite enough.” Saul glances at her. “You’ll want to cast a charm to avoid the smoke. They are not only Muggle, they’re cheap. It seems like the stink of them never wants to come out of your clothing. The quality of Muggle cigarettes was so much better during the Great War.”

Jewel wrinkles her nose and casts a charm to keep the smoke away. “I assume you’ve already done the same.”

Saul nods, the smoke he exhales whirling up and away from them. “It’s not polite to go into another’s home while smelling of an ashtray.”

“I was not aware the Potter family owned a telephone.”

“They had their own until a fit of angry yet justifiable accidental magic destroyed it. I replaced it this evening, though I doubt James and Lily will thank me for the temptation,” Saul replies.

Temptation. Jewel wonders how many others in the Wizarding world have chosen to add a Muggle telephone to their households. “I didn’t know you smoked,” she says, choosing that as the safer topic. “You could have at least chosen a Wizarding brand.”

“They’ve started adding magic to increase the effect of Wizarding-branded nicotine. It’s unavoidable unless you’re willing to pay quite a bit of money for them to leave well enough alone. Besides, until today, I hadn’t had a cigarette since 1918. But for that war, I’ve never made a habit of smoking. It’s interesting on occasion, but not to my preference.”

“Then why do so now?” Jewel asks, trying to figure out what she’s missing.

“Tobacco is a natural chemical depressant. A downer.” Saul smiles when Jewel growls under her breath. “It’s a natural calming agent all on its own. Alas, that same quality also makes it addictive, else it would feature more heavily in brewing.”

Jewel frowns. “Who died?”

“A number of people, though in this particular instance? Frances Hestia Carrow Prewett, wife of Alfred, sister by marriage to the indomitable Muriel Prewett.”

Jewel has a great deal of trouble biting back her smile. “What a pity. Was karma vengeful?”

“Bloody Killing Curse to the back. That was not nearly vengeful enough,” Saul replies.

Jewel studies him in the dark. Saul has been in a strange mood since Lily was discovered to be pregnant. “Lily is fine, Saul.” The timing fits to be the cause.

“She is,” Saul agrees.

“The baby is also fine,” Jewel adds.

Saul nods. “They are.”

“Then for Merlin’s sake, Saul!” Jewel snaps. “What is your current difficulty?”

The red ember flares brightly before Saul emits the plume of smoke from his nostrils. He promptly pulls a face. “Oh, that burns far more than I recall. What are they adding to non-magical cigarettes these days?”

“Saul!”

“My first wife died in childbirth a month before our second child was to be born.”

Jewel stares at him in surprise. “Are you struggling with the reminder of an event that is now one thousand years old?”

“Nine hundred ninety years old,” Saul says, and then seems bemused. “Ah, a further lacking coincidence. I am not struggling, Jewel. I’m suffering flashbacks to memories I don’t even have. I wasn’t there at Orellana’s death, nor was I allowed to see her body until she had been properly seen to. That did not stop my mind from conjuring the worst sorts of images of how she died, and dwelling on them far too often.”

Jewel has dealt with a number of premature births, the result of too many Pure-blood bodies rejecting the notion of being pregnant for even a moment longer. “Do you fear Lily will suffer the same fate?

“No. I’m simply not fond of the timing. Zuri was born almost a full month premature on ninth September in 991.”

Jewel is no longer surprised that he’s wallowing in such a memory. “The exact same day Lily suffered her fainting spell, nine hundred ninety years later. Yes, I can see how that might be distressing.”

Saul looks cross when the cigarette proves empty of tobacco, and stubs out the roll of white and yellow paper in a shallow glass dish that looks to be made for the purpose. “Losing Orellana is a wound that has never truly healed, as I so often blame myself. I knew a pregnancy would be harsh. I could have insisted she not go through with it.”

Jewel resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Would your wife have obeyed you?”

“Oh, not in the slightest. Orellana would’ve hexed me blind if I’d ever been fool enough to try.” Saul smiles and taps a cellophane-wrapped paper box of the cheap Muggle cigarettes against the tabletop, but to her relief, he doesn’t light another.

“Lily reminds you of Orellana, doesn’t she?”

“Sometimes,” Saul admits, “and that includes Lily’s childhood ability to spit fire in one moment and then be kindness personified in the next. When she finally lost her temper, Orellana was not one to be crossed. But those sorts of similarities apply to so many, Jewel. Lily reminds me of another, yes, but she is also very much herself.”

Jewel smirks a little. She has seen that sort of fire lurking in Lily’s eyes, but Lily has kept it leashed, not yet willing to demonstrate that ferocity in front of her son. “And who do I remind you of?”

Saul turns his head to look at her. “Rowena.”

She draws back a little, as if trying to escape another cloud of cheap cigarette smoke. “You’re in jest.”

“I’m not. Rowena was often an intense, serious, and driven woman. Once she had her heart set on a goal, she would see it done, or some fool would suffer for keeping her from attaining it.” Saul smiles. “She could be cranky and irritable, but her sense of humor was much like yours. Quieter, rarer. She loved her three children with all the ferocity in her heart. To lose one of them to murder was such a blow that she never recovered from it. Worse, Rowena suffered the guilt of knowing that the man she’d tasked with seeking out her daughter’s whereabouts, desiring he request only that Helena return home, was the very same man who murdered her.”

Jewel presses her lips together and says nothing. The comparison is apt, and she will not begrudge being compared to the Founder of her son’s House.

Saul saves her from any need for awkward words. “The next batch of Multa Facies Sucus is finished. Are you ready to continue?”

“I strongly suggest we inform Lily that this part of our mad plan has already begun before that time,” Jewel suggests dryly.

“That would be wise, yes.”

* * * *

September began with stress, continued on with complete and utter panic, and then got really fucking _weird_. James can mostly handle the stress and the panic, especially once he was assured, multiple times, that Lily and the baby were going to be fine. He keeps mentally tripping over _baby_ , because that is their second child. Sirius deserves to know and be here, but James is coping. Jewel might kill James if he keeps pacing the house, but deer aren’t great at sleeping when everything seems like it’s about to go to shit. Doesn’t matter that the shit is over with; he’s going to be a jumpy twit for a while.

While Lily is recovering from the Fainting Incident, the Polyjuice part of the plan is finally put into action. James nearly freaks out, again, when he finds his wife in the kitchen before he realizes that sardonic smirk is definitely not one worn by Lily. “Some warning would’ve been nice!” James complains, and then goes to collapse at the kitchen table next to Harry. “How are those banana chunks, champ?”

Harry doesn’t look happy about the banana chunks. He’s holding one, investigating it with all the concentration James used to reserve for Hogwarts exams. “Dad?” he asks, holding it out.

“All yours, Harry. I don’t think bananas and I would be friends right now.”

“Have you eaten at all since yesterday morning?” Jewel asks. She sounds like Lily, but Jewel is deliberately using her own speech patterns. It helps keep the mindfuck down to a dull roar.

“I really don’t remember.” He’s been a bit too nervous to sit down long enough for food.

Jewel nods, as if she expected that kind of answer. “There is broth in the cupboard, in cans, that I imagine the house-elves must have delivered during the night. Start there, with the chicken. I believe the house-elves intended the beef broth to be for your wife. They mentioned nothing of her pregnancy, and nothing was said to them, but house-elves always seem to know.”

“Thanks for telling me.” James retrieves a can of broth after Harry starts chewing on the banana, if only to find out what it is. The banana must be a success, since it isn’t tossed at the wall after the first bite.

James digs around until he finds the can opener. He could’ve used his wand, but he knows his limits, and he doesn’t want the entire kitchen to smell like chicken broth because he exploded a can. He pours the broth into a mug, warming it with a charm that nearly sets it to boiling. That would be a prime example of leaving well enough alone for a while, definitely. He lets it cool down before he tries to put his face anywhere near it. “Has Harry had any opinions about you suddenly playing Mum?”

“Saul had to leave early this morning and will return soon, but he says that Harry thinks it’s a new game.” Jewel sounds wry and rather besotted with James’s kid. “He knows that I’m Other-Mum, and that his real mother is upstairs. In fact, Harry knew the difference before I said a word. I now understand what Lily meant about denims, as well, and will need to work on that. They are not uncomfortable to wear, but they are certainly different.”

“Do you think it’ll make a difference? Harry knowing the difference between you, I mean,” James clarifies. He’s going to be reminding himself, often, that this is about saving Harry’s life and preserving their family, even though Jewel walking around Polyjuiced as Lily all the time is extremely messed up.

Jewel pauses in the midst of stirring milk into her morning tea. “Saul thinks it will not. I agree with him. I realize that doesn’t sound like the best reassurance, but I choose to look at it from this perspective: we know I will succeed, because I _did_ succeed.”

James tries not to feel ill. He hopes he can keep the broth down after he drinks it. “Yeah. I guess that’s the best way to look at it.”

Lily’s original faint-pale complexion improved rapidly after her first day of sleeping off the shock of fainting when her body decided it missed the memo on needing extra iron. Every day as she wakes up with more pink on her face and at the end of her nose, James convinces more of his high-strung bloody deer Animagus anxiety to step down another few notches.

When Lily comes down into the kitchen on Sunday morning, dressed in her normal clothes, all she does is eye her Polyjuice clone in bemusement before facing James and Sal. “If anyone in this house tells me to go back to bed, I’ll hex you bald.”

“Only as long as you sit down if you feel even the slightest bit off,” James counters. He values her more than he values his hair, even if he would probably look ridiculous bald.

(There is no probably. Sirius hexed him bald in their fifth year. James retaliated by hexing Sirius bald everywhere _else_. Utterly worth it for the sudden shriek from the bathroom the next morning.)

Lily eyes James like she’s expecting a prank, but nods. “Okay. I’ll even start right now. Please tell me there are eggs in this house. I might kill for a scramble with cheese.”

“Better that than avocado and mustard or chicken salad, I guess,” James says. Robert keeps eating the elf-delivered chicken salad, the oddball. The house-elves are probably so confused by the chicken salad disappearing all the time again after Lily spent a year asking for them to _please stop_.

Jewel turns around and regards Lily. “A scramble with the cheese mixed in, or melted over the top?”

“Over the top,” Lily says, after debating far too long about where cheese on eggs should go. “Oh, and an orange.”

James winces. “Please not orange bits in the scramble. Some things you just don’t do, honey.”

“No! Not in the eggs,” Lily retorts, glaring at him. “Don’t be silly. I just want to eat it. All of it.”

Sal looks as if he’s trying very hard not to laugh. “Your digestive system would not thank you if you ate the peel.”

“Maybe not the peel, then,” Lily relents. “But we could grate the peel for orange zest and make biscuits. With chocolate.”

“Oh, I’m going to enjoy your pregnancy cravings,” Jewel murmurs with obvious pleasure. James considers whimpering in despair. “Chocolate orange biscuits sound amazing, especially with cream.”

“Oh, yes! Whipped cream, do we have that?” Lily asks.

James lets his head thump down on the table. The others think this is funny. James remembers that this is the path that eventually lead to avocado slices dipped in spicy mustard. “Sweetheart, no.”

“Says the man who has never eaten a chocolate orange liquor-flavored biscuit in his entire life,” Jewel says with a dainty sniff.

“Oh, and I’ve made up my mind.”

James looks at Lily. “Made up your mind about what?”

Lily is gazing at Sal. “I want to speak to the 992 portrait.”

“After breakfast, then,” Sal agrees, though James notices a line of tension to his shoulders that wasn’t there before.

 _How odd must it be_ , James wonders, _to introduce your brother to his own parents?_ That doesn’t even take into account the time travel, and that this portrait is nearly one thousand years old.

Lily grasps onto something James missed. “You mean you have it with you? The portrait?”

Sal nods. “I’ve done so at all times since first coming here on the thirty-first of July. He insisted. I’ll warn you that the portrait is quite the eavesdropper. Any of my brother’s portraits are.”

James glances at Lily, who still looks surprised. “Well…that won’t be weird or anything.”

* * * *

Salazar understands why he is nervous just as much as he doesn’t. Granted, he has never revealed his little brother’s portrait in such a way, and with such import behind its introduction. He waits until Jewel has absconded with the baby, as he knows that the portrait’s opinion on seeing himself as an infant is _never_. Given how tense Nizar’s portrait is regarding this first meeting, especially when it has been put off for so long, Salazar doesn’t wish to make things worse for him.

He removes the carefully rolled portrait from his inner jacket pocket, surprising Lily and James yet again. “You’ve had it there?” James asks.

“The entire time, as I’ve said, though in more dangerous situations I keep it safe in the kit you first saw on the thirty-first, as it opens only for me,” Salazar replies. He retrieves the portrait’s frame from his jacket pocket as well. The wood is getting old, despite the charms that Preserved it, and he worries about how much longer it will last. The portrait won’t lose magic without a frame, but Salazar learned through the centuries that the portrait’s original frame is imbued with magic specific to his school, just like the portrait itself. Another frame will do the portrait no good at all until the painting is returned to Hogewáþ.

“I thought portraits from that era were all painted on panels,” Lily says. Salazar glances at her, curious. “I took the magical art classes up through the O.W.L. exams, but I didn’t want to take a N.E.W.T. in the subject. Madam Adams was insistent that panels were the common medium until the sixteenth century, but when I asked why older portraits in Hogwarts were obviously canvas, she couldn’t answer me. Sputtered something about magical communities being different and refused to discuss it. It took me a few days to realize that she didn’t actually know why magical communities had canvas _and_ panel paintings.”

Salazar smiles. “But you had a theory.”

“And voicing it meant I failed that particular assignment.” Lily’s tone is dry, but Salazar can hear the anger remaining beneath her casual words. “We have Preservation Charms, and the non-magical community didn’t.”

“At first, both sides did,” Salazar counters. “You are otherwise correct, which is why Hogwarts has canvas portraits that are so old. When the separation between magical and non-magical occurred, and then became worse, magicians trained in magical arts could no longer safely go around applying those same Preservation Charms to non-magical canvases—or to non-magical wooden panels, or plaster-washed and painted walls, for that matter. The world lost a number of irreplaceable pieces of art from those centuries, and we stand to lose yet more. But for those locked away in a museum’s temperature-controlled storage vaults, many of the oldest preserved pieces are also ready to crumble into dust.”

Lily bites her lip as Salazar unrolls the canvas. “That’s depressing.”

“It is, yes.” Within Nizar’s the portrait, Salazar’s little brother is on his hands and knees on the portrait’s painted floor. He has a piece of chalk in his hands, and is inscribing runes and numbers like a mad fiend. “What in the gods’ names are you doing?”

“ _Arithmancy. Geomancy. Bit of both. Maybe Pictish mixed in,_ ” Nizar hisses back without looking up.

Lily stares at the painting. James has his head tilted, as if he is trying for a better look at someone who is currently far smaller, perspective-wise, than expected. “What did he say?” James asks.

“Magical maths,” Salazar grants as a less complicated answer. “Nizar, why?”

“ _Because I think I’m figuring something out._ ”

“You think.” Salazar peers closer at the Arithmantic mess on the portrait’s floor. “Do I even want to know where you found chalk?”

“ _Do you really_ want _to know?_ ” Nizar counters.

Salazar grimaces, remembering incidents such as the bloody popcorn. “No. No, I do not.”

“ _That’s easier, then._ ” Nizar sits up, casting his features into profile and granting James and Lily a clearer view of their insane son at the age of seventeen. “ _Okay. So. Walk with the portrait…that way,_ ” Nizar hisses, pointing to his right. The only thing in that direction is the hallway.

“Why?”

“ _Just do it, stubborn idiot brother!_ ”

Salazar rolls his eyes and does so, coming to a stop in the parlor when Nizar says nothing. “Now what?”

“ _Turn left._ ”

Salazar eyes the portrait. “There is a wall to the left, Nizar.”

“ _Then go around the wall!_ ” Nizar snaps in annoyance.

“What are doing?” Lily asks, looking as baffled as Salazar feels.

“I’ve absolutely no idea, but if Nizar is on a tear, it’s always been easier to go along with it until the tear makes sense.” Salazar stops at the blank space of wall between the cottage’s front door and the coat rack. “Now what, little brother?”

“ _If there is a wall directly in front of you, hang the portrait there,_ ” Nizar instructs.

Salazar frowns. That is definitely against the plan of hiding the portrait in the new guest bedroom that used to house Monty’s library. He’ll need to make certain the doorstop is sturdy enough to keep the cottage’s front door from slamming into the wall. “Why?”

Nizar tosses the chalk aside, clears the Arithmantic mess off his painted floor by waving his hand, and grins. “ _You’ll find out._ ”

Appeased by the thought of an explanation, Salazar mounts the portrait to the wall at eye level using an excellent Sticking Charm that will hold until the painting needs to be retrieved. “There. Happy now?” Salazar asks the portrait.

“Ecstatic,” Nizar replies—in modern English.

Salazar drops his hands from the frame and steps back, granting Lily and James the means to see the portrait, as well. For them, they will see a young man whose skin is finally beginning to understand the purpose of sunlight. Dark brown hair with spike-like curls, still fighting the Metamorph magic, hovers just above his shoulders. Hazel eyes, almost exactly like Salazar’s own. The others always said Salazar had more green to his eyes, and Nizar more grey, but Salazar has never been able to see it that way unless he glimpsed it through another’s memories. Nizar has the same straight nose, as well, but his is snubbed at the end in mimicry of his mother’s. Black tunic, trousers, boots, and robes, with faint hints of curling embroidery threads of deep, dark violet that others most often cannot see.

“I thought you were only supposed to be hissing?” James asks the question not of Salazar, but of Nizar’s portrait, and is thus already doing exactly as he ought.

“I am, but don’t worry about an influx of babbling, as it will be short-lived. Some _pendejo_ , however, has just proven exactly how much he needs to sodding _sleep!_ ” Nizar declares, glaring at Salazar.

“I’m. Fine,” Salazar retorts.

“No, you’re not, or you’d already know exactly why I can speak English right now and not be endangering every other bit of magic that makes up this portrait!” Nizar tosses the white smudge of chalk out of his portrait’s framed boundaries and shakes his head. “You’re an Earth-speaker, _idiota_ , and I notice this first? Truly? I should have noticed second!”

Salazar rests his hand over his eyes. “No! No, it isn’t that. It’s that I was here so often before, and the first visit I was in such miserable shape—I’m so used to it I didn’t even think on it!”

“It’s still not the sort of detail that should slip your mind!”

Lily lets out a sudden giggle. “Okay, this is easier than I thought it would be. The pair of you are completely ridiculous. Hello, Harry. Yes, I know I shouldn’t have said it…but just the once, I wanted to. Hello, Nizar.”

James makes a punch-winded, choked sound. “Hello.”

When Salazar lowers his hand, Nizar is staring at Lily with a bit of his Court-mask in place, meant to neutralize as much of his expression as possible. Then his gaze flicks over to include James. “Both of you understand what a magical portrait is, yes? The capabilities and the limitations?”

“Unless Madam Adams was as much of a fraud as Professor Thorn, then yes, we do.” Lily frowns. “Why?”

“This is actually much less weird than dealing with my grandparents and great-grandparents. I couldn’t do anything but use names with them. It was just…no, never mind, it’s still weird.” Nizar’s portrait sighs. “I’m just a shaped paint-based recording system with a hell of a lot of magic attached, which should be rather obvious. From what I’ve heard, Adams is less knowledgeable about how magical portraits maintain the physical, emotional, and mental traits of whatever they were like when painted. Myself might’ve updated this portrait on thirtieth October 1017, but it was painted when I was seventeen years old. You’re basically talking to a recording of that insane teenager—and yes, I can call myself mental all that I like, because it’s true.”

“I bet that speech there was more useful than taking that sodding class with Adams for three years,” James says, and Lily rolls her eyes. “Teenager you with an adult’s knowledge. Got it. Why does that matter?”

“Your sister doesn’t have a single photograph of you anywhere in the house,” Nizar’s portrait says in blunt honesty. Lily flinches, but nods, unsurprised. “Not unless Aunt Petunia has it hidden away under lock and key, and somehow I rather doubt that. I had no photographs of either of you. I'd never seen one. The first time I saw your faces was via one of Dumbledore’s acquisitions he ‘borrowed’ from the Department of Mysteries, and gods know when that was. The Mirror of Erised is inscribed with the words, backwards: _I show not your face, but your deepest desire_. So, uh…except for a few photographs Hagrid was kind enough to give me at the end of my first school term? That brief stint with the Mirror is the only memory I have of you. Consider this a practice run for dealing with Myself after Hallowe’en 1995. He might be older, but I imagine we’ll both be as nervous and as prone to babbling as I am right now.”

“Sweetheart…are you trying to warn us about yourself?” Lily asks, biting her lip.

“Kind of, yeah. I mean…” Nizar hesitates. “I don’t actually know what to call you. Either of you. I know what would feel normal for me, but again: I was seventeen when this portrait was painted. I’ve no idea what a thousand-and-change-years-old me would prefer, and you already have a child calling you Mum and Dad right now.”

“Oh,” James whispers. Salazar flinches, understanding why James is so bothered. It’s the same reason James couldn’t unwrap the portraits of his parents and grandparents.

Lily sniffs, but her nod is a mimicry of Elizabetha’s famous steel. “Mum is fine, sweetheart. Even if you’re a painted recording of Nizar, you’re still…you’re him. You know what he knows, up to a point. It’s not ideal, but it’s okay.”

“Yeah.” James nearly strangles himself on the word and tries again. “Yeah. I can…Dad. Use that. It’s fine.”

“Okay.” Nizar looks awkward. “Hi, Mum and Dad—no, wait, don’t cry!” he adds in a panic. “I’m just a portrait, I can’t fix crying!”

Lily snatches James’s handkerchief when he holds it out for her to use first. “It’s _you_. I’m your mum and I can’t stop any of this. It actually makes it worse to know that you really do understand how I feel!”

Nizar reaches somewhere into the darkness of his own portrait’s background and pulls forth his own chair to sit in, propping up his chin on his clasped hands, elbows resting on his bent knees. “Yes. I really do. With that understanding in mind? I’m very sorry.”

“All I want…” James has to stop and take several calming breaths. “All I want is to hear this from you, something that is as close to a direct line to my son as I can get right now without baffling an infant. You really want us to do this. You want us to go through with this insanity of playing dead for fourteen years, even knowing what it will mean for you?”

Nizar tilts his head. “I’ve already done it, though. I know from your perspective, that doesn’t make sense, but I don’t grow up as a kid from Godric’s Hollow. I’m from Surrey. I even bloody sound like it again after telly broadcasts kicked the accent back to life. Are those years enjoyable? A lot of them aren’t. But I know me. If anyone had ever asked me, once I was capable of understanding what was at stake, if I would be willing to grow up without you if it meant that you both lived? No hesitation at all. Not then. Not when this portrait was painted. Not later. Not ever.”

“My wife is crying harder, Sal is tearing up, and I think I’m going to be sick again,” James announces. “So I’m going with the brick bit and changing the subject right now, because sobbing is still an option, here. What were you and Sal arguing about? Noticing what? How did you deal with that much Arithmancy without your head exploding?”

Nizar bursts out laughing. “Yeah, I knew you weren’t the swot in the family, that isn’t a surprise. Still funny, though, especially when it seems to be _you_ who I get the nervous babbling from. Sal and I were arguing about the fact that this house is very, very close to Griffon’s Door.”

Lily sucks in a startled breath. “You don’t mean the old keep, or Potter Manor. You mean—”

“The actual Door, yeah,” Nizar confirms, grinning. “The same one you would’ve heard spoken of in those Pensieve memories. Wait, was one of those memories of us visiting Griffon’s Door?”

“You, Sal, and…GodricandSedemaiGryffindor,” James blurts the last in a rush.

Nizar raises both eyebrows. “Still weird, huh?”

Lily nods, managing to dry the majority of her tears. “Very. I don’t regret it, except for what You-Know-Bloody-Who is making necessary…but it’s still weird.”

“It isn’t the proximity that’s allowing me to use human language again, and that won’t last for very long, besides. I’m guessing two days, at the most. It’s the fact that this cottage was built atop a ley line whose next junction is the Door itself. It’s a direct conduit to more magic in any place on this isle unless you were capable of recognizing and finding another Door’s first ley line junction, or if you were standing within Hogwarts herself. The former, by the way, isn’t very likely. Not anymore. That Arithmancy _and_ Geomancy was me figuring out how to line up the portrait with the ley line, which grants what the two of you very much needed—real speech from sort-of-real me.”

“Nizar babbles when he’s nervous,” Salazar explains, smirking when the portrait glares at him.

“I also babble when I’m not, so that isn’t really saying much. Or it’s saying far too much. I haven’t had a decent conversation with anyone aside from Salazar that didn’t involve sign language in at least five years, so you’re stuck with a lot of pent-up words, and I’m not sorry.”

“I’m glad. For the pent-up words. I didn’t want…I mean, I wanted…” James takes a shuddering breath. “If we manage to learn that sign language stuff, will you—keep talking? To us, I mean?”

Nizar looks startled. “Keep talking? Monty would have been among the first of those who would warn you that the talking isn’t the difficulty, it’s the shutting me up.”

“I’m sitting down now,” James mutters, and drops down right between Salazar and Lily in the entryway.

“Uh, James?” Lily glances at him in concern.

“I’m all right. Just having a weird moment, really getting it through my head that Dad learned what he called his best lessons in defence from his own grandson’s portrait,” James responds in a faint voice.

“Monty had a weird moment or seventy about that, too,” Nizar says. Salazar doubts that will help James’s state of mind, but better full honesty now than more emotional landmines later. “But—okay, there’s that, too, and I think you’ll handle hearing this better from me than you would anyone else. If it helps, Jewel agrees with me, and I wouldn’t want to argue with her if I were you, especially since _you_ are pregnant and are supposed to be staying calm.”

“You-Know-Who is going to blow up my front door in on Hallowe’en,” Lily says flatly.

Nizar raises his hands in a frustrated shrug. “As calm as possible. I’d like for the kid I’m pretty sure is my sibling to still exist when I meet them in third year—”

“Who?” Sal, Lily, and James nearly all ask at the same time.

Nizar rolls his eyes. “The kid’s due to be born sometime in April. You can all three wait until then to find out what kind of sibling I mean. But that’s tangentially related to what I wanted to say. This portrait is still going to exist after Hallowe’en, and it will be easily accessible.” Nizar’s portrait points up to indicate the first storey of the cottage. “You can learn sign language from Jewel, Robert, and Saul at any point from now. In the meantime, there is an actual child who is _still here, still yours_ , and he needs you.”

“Why?” James asks. “I mean…in the Pensieve, you don’t remember us. You just remember those photographs you mentioned.”

“And God bless Hagrid for that, too,” Lily murmurs.

James nods. “So, why is it still important, aside from the fact that I don’t want to be _that_ kind of shite parent?”

Nizar doesn’t hesitate, making Sal wonder how often the portrait has calculated the twists and turns this conversation could take. Gods, but it makes him wonder how often his brother, before the 1017 portrait, considered such things in his own mind. “I mentioned the Mirror of Erised, and I told you that Hagrid gave me those photographs of both of you, but the photographs came months afterward. The Mirror, meanwhile, showed me the two of you. It also showed me others; it showed me what I wanted—a family. The sticking point, however, is that the Lily and James Potter I saw in that Mirror were a match to the photographs I’d later receive.

“I’ve now met my grandparents, great-grandparents, my great-aunt, my great-uncle. _None of them_ were reflected in the Mirror of Erised. They weren’t there because as a child, I never had opportunity to meet them. Somewhere in my head, even if I couldn’t recall it consciously, I did still remember my parents. I’m not talking about the lost memories held in that damned Horcrux shard, either. I mean _me._ The Mirror of Erised used my subconscious memories of you both to create those images. That means your infant son will remember you, but you need to be there for him for that recollection to stick.”

“Just saying _oh_ sounds like it’s not enough, but…yeah, that’s all I’ve got,” James says in a faint voice. “No wonder Dad groused about his Defence tutoring.” When his son is ‘on a tear,’ as Sal called it, he is Goddamned _thorough_.

“Monty liked to complain about it because of how much of it he knew he should have learned at Hogwarts, not from me. I’m still angry about that, too. The sodding Defence standards even in the 1940s were absolutely _daft_ ,” Nizar complains. “I’m afraid to ask what they’re like right now. I don’t even know why they moved my bloody classroom!”

“The fourth storey isn’t…well…” Lily smiles. “Not all of the Pensieve memories were specific, but you sound like you mean that the fourth storey DADA classroom wasn’t where you taught.”

“Defence. Defence, just call it Defence, _please_ ,” Nizar’s portrait begs, slumping back in his own chair. “And no; my original classroom as well as my quarters were on the seventh storey, in a tower off the corridor where that stupid ballet-dancing troll tapestry hangs.”

“There isn’t a doorway in that corridor,” Lily says, just as James yelps, “Your classroom is in the _Room of Requirement?_ ”

Nizar’s portrait stares at his parents in utter bafflement. “My classroom is a _what_ , now?”

* * * *

James isn’t daft and he can admit it: his son’s portrait is right. As fascinating as it is to be able to speak to his kid, even by portrait, his son is still _right here._ That’s where his concentration needs to be, because he lives with a little boy who still loses his balance when he runs at a faster pace than a toddling trot. That little speed demon needs his father. Harry needs James and Lily, Dad and Mum. After the portrait’s estimated two days of magic strong enough to fuel a brief spate of English have come and gone, Sal takes the portrait down from the wall and secrets it away again. James mourns the loss, but it’s just temporary stupidity, mostly. There is a much bigger loss coming, and he still isn’t certain he can handle it.

Jewel, Sal, and Robert are happy to teach sign language, even if it starts out with the alphabet. Lily has flexible fingers and adapts to the idea of communication by complicated sign much faster than James does.

James ties his fingers into knots and makes embarrassing errors, but he grits his teeth and keeps trying. It’ll be worth it. Even if he can only speak to other Underground members and Britain’s deaf community—and fuck, but James feels stupid for never realizing it wasn’t just the elderly who could be deaf—he’ll be able to use sign language with Nizar’s portrait again one day. Robert says actual-Nizar in that fucking painted Pensieve knows this language, too. Worth it. Every bit of frustration will be worth it.

“So, if the portrait’s accent before Parseltongue returned is based on Surrey…what does my son sound like?” Lily asks Robert and Jewel on a night that both of them are free to stay in the cottage with the family. James has no idea how they ended up playing Muggle Blackjack at the kitchen table, but Harry is napping and no one could think of anything else to do until Lily produced her worn set of playing cards. “I doubt he still sounds like a teenager from Surrey.”

Jewel smiles. “No, he does not. From what I’m given to understand, not even Surrey sounded like Surrey one thousand years ago. However, the Professor’s accent is…complicated.”

“How complicated is complicated?” James wants to know. Even if he won’t hear his adult son’s voice until after Hallowe’en in 1995, a hint would be nice. Accents change with time. The accent his son had in ancient Pensieve memories won’t be the same at all.

“I’ll put an example of it into the Pensieve for you after we’ve dealt with Hallowe’en,” Robert offers. He’s almost as good as Jewel for hiding any delight or disappointment in his cards. James has no idea if his hand for this round of Blackjack is better or worse after his third card. Sal passes; James deals himself a third card and then shoves his hand to the center of the table in irritation when he ends up with twenty-three points. That leaves Jewel, Lily, Robert, and Sal still in the game, and they’re all terrifying.

“In the meantime, though?” Lily prods after James deals the rest of the cards. Lily and Robert pass, but Jewel and Sal both accept another. There are no forfeits; it doesn’t put them over. James is suddenly glad they aren’t trying to play a magical version of the game. The results would probably be violent and loud.

“Take a Northern Scottish accent, add in Lancashire, a bit of southern Wales, a great deal of Spanish influence, and then toss it into a mixer with London Estuary, but the results are all perfectly enunciated,” Robert says. “That’s what happens when you leave a portrait hanging in a Common Room populated by a British Pure-blood majority for nine centuries, I guess.”

Sal laughs and flips over his hand after Lily, Jewel, and Robert. Lily and Sal are tied at two face cards, twenty points. “Shall we call it a tie, or face off?”

“That pun was atrocious,” Jewel complains. “And also, I’m not convinced that you didn’t cheat.”

“Why would I need to cheat at Blackjack?” Sal protests, insulted. “It’s just maths!”

James shakes his head, contemplating the fact that Jewel Burke is an excellent actress. Not only does she continue to play the role needed in Voldemort’s court to perfection—a feat relayed by Regulus—but she learns Lily’s movements, physical quirks, and habits to such an extent that James has taken to writing down the color of shirt that Lily puts on every morning. He doesn’t want to kiss the wrong person by accident, even if he suspects Jewel would find it funny. Lily would be the one putting James’s bollocks in a vise for being that careless.

Then Lily comes to him one morning in the second week of September, waving a letter and all but radiating fury. “Look at this! Look at this absolute rubbish, James!”

“First you have to let me take it,” James counters. Lily all but tosses the letter at him. He scans it with a practiced eye, recognizing Albus’s script, written two days ago. “Albus wants us to meet the writer of the most rubbish textbook used by Hogwarts?”

“Bathilda Bagshot, yes!” Lily throws up her arms and swears at the ceiling. “She lives in the village, too, and Dumbledore wants us to meet her, and…and…something! Why on _Earth_ are we supposed to invite that woman into our house when no one else is allowed to be here? Aren’t we supposed to be in bloody hiding?”

James reads through the letter again, brow furrowed. “Yeah, this is…you’re right. This doesn’t make sense.” He doesn’t enjoy the cold chill of realization, either. If it weren’t for Sal, James would convince Lily to have Bagshot over to the cottage, and he has no idea what that would mean for them.

It takes James two full, proper re-reads to grasp it all, but this letter from Albus isn’t a suggestion or advice. It’s an order disguised with pretty language and flattery.

James lowers the letter and looks at Lily. “What the fuck, Lil?”

“I know!” Lily paces in a narrow circle, her hair blowing out behind her like waves of fire while fury turns her emerald eyes to sparkling gems. “It doesn’t make any sense, and that’s aside from the fact that I don’t want a stranger in my house, touching my baby. We don’t know this woman, James! She could be a Death Eater in disguise, hoping we’ll be looking for magical company after so long cooped up in this house. We wouldn’t even know if her behavior was unusual or not!”

“If Albus didn’t know that Death Eaters were already aware of where the cottage is, this is certainly him trying to make certain they find out.” James folds the letter, his stomach knotted up. He already knew Albus wanted them to die. He wants them dead so the prophecy will play out. They’re just chess pieces for the greater good.

“Wait.” Sal pops his head around the corner from the parlor. “Say that last part again.”

“Uh—Albus wants us dead so the prophecy will play out,” James repeats, though he paraphrases a bit; he hadn’t even noticed he was speaking the whole of that aloud. “We’re just chess pieces for the greater good.”

“That. That bit there at the end.” Sal scowls. “Why is Albus Dumbledore parroting part of Grindelwald’s old propaganda?”

“It might not be intentional. We already know Albus thinks it’s for the greater good that we win this war,” James says, but he feels uneasy. “I don’t agree with the way he’s going about it, not anymore, but Albus is right about the need to defeat You-Know-Who.”

“I’ve no idea, beyond what you’ve already surmised of Dumbledore’s plausible intentions,” Jewel says of Albus’s letter after reading it. “No one has seen Bathilda Bagshot in social circles in…oh, at least several decades. Possibly not since Grindelwald’s trial and resulting imprisonment in 1945.”

Lily rolls her eyes, reminding James a _lot_ of portrait Nizar’s mannerisms. “Not only does Dumbledore want me to invite a stranger into my home to endanger my baby, he wants me to invite Grindelwald’s English-dwelling family member. No thanks.”

“Tell Sirius,” James suggests, knowing his wife is already plotting out her next letter. They hope Sirius has time to read it, and respond.

Lily is going to tell Sirius about the pregnancy.

In the third week of September, Sal puts a potion phial on the kitchen table. James has just fed Harry and sent him off to wander the back garden with Dragon, so he picks up the potion, curious. It’s orange with maybe-pink hints at the edges, definitely not one that James recognizes. “I keep forgetting, but there has been so much to do that I hope I can be forgiven for that,” Sal explains.

“Given the nature of everything we’ve planned and done since Harry’s birthday?” James nods and then yawns. He hasn’t been sleeping well. The closer they get to October, and to Hallowe’en, the more he worries and the less he sleeps. At least Harry, who also doesn’t believe in sleep, is good company.

“We’re all feeling a bit ragged around the edges.” Sal tilts his head at the phial in James’s hand. “This is the Oculus Potion’s precursor, Sana Visio, translated as _healthy vision_. It literally works on every single person who has ever ingested it. It’s high time you left the necessity of those glasses behind.”

“That would be rather obvious, me wandering around without glasses.”

Sal raises an eyebrow. “This potion is my brother’s invention, created when he was fifteen years old. It would be foolish to turn down this sort of gift.”

“Nizar made—” James keeps choking on his own words of late. Right now, he’s holding one of his son’s inventions, an amazing creation a boy still named Harry will make nearly one thousand years in the past. James feels a bit nervy, accompanied by a humble sort of awed pride. “That’s amazing. It restores eyesight? Completely?”

“And will repair any eye injury that does not involve partial or full removal of the eye itself from the skull so long as the damage isn’t deeper within the brain,” Sal tells him. “The lenses of your glasses can be faked through Hallowe’en so that you’re only encumbered by unmagnified glass. Your grandfather and your father did so for years.”

“They did?” James asks in shock, lifting his head from the potion to stare at Sal.

“Of course they did. Drink the damned potion, James.”

James shrugs, decides that Sal, Robert, and Jewel have had plenty of opportunity to kill him by this point, and drinks the potion. A few minutes later, he’s yanking off his glasses in shock.

Everything is in crisp, sharp detail. He’s never experienced the world like this, even when his glasses have been of the best possible quality. “Holy shit.” James looks down at the glasses in his hand. “How long does it last?”

“The rest of your life.” Sal smiles when James gapes at him. “Well, you might wish to take it again every decade or so as age and stress take their toll. But otherwise, you’ll never need glasses again.”

James puts his glasses in his pocket and goes to see Lily. He wants to stare at her and soak in every single bit of her beauty. He knows it won’t be the last time, but this is the _first_ time he’s been ever to see her so clearly. James examines Lily’s face with his hands, to her bemusement, runs his fingers through her long fiery hair, traces the arch of her darker red brows and the warm curve of her lip.

Thank goodness they have two childminders in the house. That examination quickly deteriorates into mind-blowing sex for the first time since Sirius’s visit on Harry’s birthday. They’ve both been too stressed, too worried, and too insanely busy. Lily props herself up on James’s chest afterward and teases him about the lack of reflection, and how she now can’t use his glasses to study herself like a posing, narcissist nymph.

“I love you.” James says it every moment he thinks of it, to her and to Harry. If something goes wrong on Hallowe’en, he doesn’t want Lily to forget. He wants Lily to one day be able to tell Harry—tell Nizar—that there is no doubt in this world that his father loved him.

Lily drops a kiss onto his nose, then a longer one onto James’s lips. “I love you, too.”

James tightens his arms around her. “We’re going to be okay.” _Tell me we are. Tell me so I can believe it, too_.

She smiles at him, even though her expression is a bit sad. “Yeah. We’re going to be okay.”


	41. Blood Upon Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whole of October 1981 is made of waiting breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @norcumii is awesome for beta-beta-ing by cheer-reading, so...not actually beta'ing, but close enough for what people have time for nowadays I guess, so if there are errors, they are probably hilarious. *g*
> 
> Also--yeah, I know I went radio-silent. Med changes, realizing I hit a wall 5 years ago and taking a REAL break this time--I needed both, but both are a Process.
> 
> I didn't need the pneumonia that pretended it was Covid-19 Take Two, though. I mean, I'm glad it wasn't the other one, but I've never had pneumonia before and what the fuck is that shit, fuck that noise, Buckets full of Nope. So...yep, that's why I've been quiet. It was mostly the five-year-old wall, though.

By first October, all their plans are set. They’ve gone over and over what needs to be done the day of Hallowe’en. They’ve agreed to let the cottage remain in trust, held by the Goblins for Harry, or by the Ministry, or…or _someone_. James doesn’t know, and neither does Lily. It isn’t as if Petunia will want anything to do with it. Aside from the hatred of Lily and of magic, Godric’s Hollow would be too “backwards” for her sister’s daft sense of taste.

Lily steps out into her back garden while dawn is still just a hint on the horizon. She holds out her hand to Salazar, feels his warm fingers close around hers, and shuts her eyes. Their Side-Along Apparition is possibly the most gentle she’s ever experienced, with only a vague hint of the pulling sensation she’s always been told is _normal_.

“It’s beautiful,” Lily says at once of the Willow House. It isn’t just the Tudor build of the cottage, which she suspects has been enhanced on the inside with magical space. It’s the gentle slope of the front lawn and its ancient stone path, the herb gardens on every corner of the house that she can see, the gourds in the autumn vegetable plot in the rear garden, the benches and the flowering plants. All of it is shaded by the massive overhanging drapery of a gorgeous weeping willow tree. “Which came first? The cottage or the tree?” The question is a good distraction from the sudden, unhappy realization that on Hallowe’en, she’ll have to leave her willow wand behind forever.

“I’d only finished laying the first stones for the cottage cellar when I realized a tree was growing so close by. I worried that the roots would tear through the foundation as the years passed, but it never happened. By now, house and tree are a bit of a matched set.” Salazar leads her to the front door, keeping his hand on hers so that Lily won’t lose sight of a house she isn’t yet linked to by charm or blood. The inside is white-washed walls and high Tudor beams, herbs drying in the kitchen, and far too many cauldrons doing the work of stewing lacewings on the kitchen countertop.

The cellar door is near the kitchen, neatly hidden in a way that makes it seem to be part of the wall until it’s opened by magic. Stepping down into the cellar makes Lily try to hold her breath.

Her hair feels like it must be standing on end, even though it isn’t. Her bones seem to be thrumming beneath her skin.

“This is what it’s like, isn’t it? To be atop a powerful magical node?”

Salazar nods and leads her to the center of the cellar, where a simpler, rough-squared stone is carved on a short jut of rock that was never smoothed away. “You’ve just proven yourself sensitive to the flow of magic. Most don’t notice what the node is like until they’re bleeding upon the house’s foundation stone.” He glances at her and smiles. “It’s yet another gift you granted to your son.”

Lily swallows hard, blinking back tears. “I just slice a fingertip with my wand and place it on the stone. Just like we’ve said. Nothing else will happen.”

“The house will recognize you, and now that I know you’re sensitive to the flow of magic, you might be more aware of the magic as it binds you to this node. You’ll be able to sense for yourself that it will harm you not.” He gestures at the stone and then steps back. “I swear to you that nothing will go wrong.”

She gets the slicing part over with quickly, watching as blood wells up. “Salazar?”

“What is it?”

“I’m pregnant,” Lily whispers in reminder. “A mother’s blood mixes with the baby’s. Will this do anything to them?”

When she looks at him, Salazar has the distant expression he gets when he is carefully winding his way through centuries of information. “Normally, one would need to consent to blood magic, but…intention matters. If you’re doing this to safeguard the little one just as much as yourself, magic will not consider that an act of harm. If anything, it will save you from trying to explain to a toddler why he has to put a literal bloody thumbprint on a rock.”

That’s good enough for Lily. She presses her finger against the stone and gasps, because she _can_ feel it. The node is like an afterimage in her mind, a great golden-silver-white pulse of power that branches outwards, tying itself to the land around them. The house is its wellspring, its point of emergence from the earth. Then that magic welcomes her, makes her part of it. It claims the baby with a strong pulse of joy for new magical life—a boy, Lily will have a son with Rose Ravensloft Evans’s deep red hair instead of her fiery waves—and then Lily is standing there with her arms hanging at her sides, her finger healed, and no trace of blood left on the stone.

“He’s a boy,” Lily says. She’s crying, because Sirius won’t meet their baby. Not for years. “Oh, and I think the rock likes us.” She can feel it; she doesn’t even need the Fidelius Charm’s Secret Keeper phrase to access the Willow House anymore.

“This island is fond of anyone who remembers that magic is of the land, and thus so are we,” Salazar murmurs. “Congratulations, Lily.” He takes her hand again for comfort, not for necessity.

“Thank you.”

While James is off with Robert, taking his turn at binding himself to the magical node beneath the Willow House, Lily chews on her bent knuckles and thinks on everything she’s learned of magic and British magical society. Those lessons didn’t start with her first day of Hogwarts, but with Severus, when Hogwarts was still several years distant. She learned that sometimes you don’t tell people that your best friend’s parents are terrible people, that saying something can make things worse. She learned that sometimes you get the bruise balm your best friend made with his own little cauldron and apply it to his back while he shivers in the cold air, too pale and too thin and too blasted stubborn to believe that Cokeworth would protect him from Tobias Snape. Or maybe Lily was the stubborn one, certain that the world was just and cruelty would always be punished.

Lily felt stupid when she realized life was almost never that fair, but Severus was the one to tell her not to give up on wanting things to be just. If _everyone_ gave up, nothing would ever change. He’d said it like he believed in her. Severus had believed in her, but Lily hadn’t believed in him, and she still doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to forgive herself for that.

Severus had tried to explain the politics of survival in Slytherin several times, but Lily was in Gryffindor, and it wasn’t that complicated. She had her ears filled with how Severus must be exaggerating it all to justify those friendships with the Slytherins who were definitely on their way to being future Death Eaters.

He defended her against her sister and that walking troll of a boyfriend-turned-husband who Petunia is so proud of, and Lily thanked him by entering their fifth year and falling right in line with the idea of Gryffindors against Slytherins. She doesn’t even know _why_. If she knew why, if there had been some event that set off that suspicion, she’d feel less…

Manipulated. She feels manipulated, and it wasn’t Severus doing the manipulating. Lily voices that thought to Salazar while Jewel feeds Harry his breakfast at ten o’clock in the morning, because Harry doesn’t believe in schedules.

“Manipulated by who?” Salazar asks.

Lily shrugs. She doesn’t know. She just feels, and that isn’t useful.

She thinks more and more on Severus and the other Slytherins of late, looking at their words and actions on the slant of the person she’s in the midst of becoming. She sees through veils of arrogance to find nothing; she peers through poncy speeches to find terror. It’s fascinating to recognize these things now, and frustrating, because most of all, Hogwarts taught her that there really is such a thing as _too late_.

Lily still doesn’t understand Slytherin politics in the way she thinks she should, but some lessons were a lot more obvious, even then. Too many idiots among the Pure-bloods had forgotten that triad courtships and marriages were real things, normal things, and they were disrespecting their own stupid traditions to say otherwise.

Dating both Sirius and James couldn’t be a scandal, couldn’t be known outside of a trusted few. It had to be a secret until after school freed them from the suffocating feel of eyes watching her every move. While she didn’t understand the steady undercurrent of politics that fueled Slytherin House, Lily _did_ understand the politics of being considered a slag.

“Did I drive my best friend right into the Dark Lord’s arms?” Lily asks Salazar. The question is abrupt enough that Jewel gives her a sharp look, teaching Lily what that expression looks like on her own face. Bloody Polyjuice.

Salazar shakes his head, seemingly unsurprised by the question. “No matter your actions, Severus Snape still ultimately chose his own. Given what Regulus observed of his conversations with a certain portrait, Severus Snape would have had quite the resource for understanding the cost of those choices.”

“Would Nizar—” That’s still so very _hard_. “—would he have told Severus what to do?”

“I said resource. Advising. Even if Nizar had no idea who Severus was, he would not tell him what choice to make. He was a teacher, Lily. He always, always gave a student the tools they needed to make informed decisions. If they then chose a poor path, it was not a failing on his part. It was not even necessarily a failing on the student’s part.”

Lily blinks at him. “How could it _not_ be?”

Salazar regards her with a fond, weary expression. “Apprentices in our day were most often still young men and women when they finished their first masteries. Now, ever more so, they are not young—they are all but _children_. Tell me: did you feel as if you were fully prepared for adulthood on your seventeenth birthday?”

“No,” Lily admits, though she would have once disparaged the idea that she wasn’t an adult. Seventeen was old enough. How could she not be ready?

“I certainly didn’t feel it, even if I pretended otherwise,” Jewel comments under her breath.

“I was a stupid bint who thought she already knew everything about how life was supposed to be.” It took war and bloodshed, real courtship beyond the bounds of school, her marriage, and the birth of her child, who Lily would defend to the death, to begin to understand what it meant to be a grown-up.

Being a grown-up is bloody awful.

Salazar smiles at her, as if sensing the thought. She isn’t doing all that bad with her Mind Magic lessons, but her Occlumency still needs work. “We never stop changing, Lily. We never stop making mistakes. The difficulty comes in remembering to keep learning from those mistakes as well as our successes. Many forget how to learn, change, grow. You are one of the few who knows that your friend learned, and survived, and now fights not for what he _thinks_ is right, but what he _knows_ is right.”

Lily reaches out and holds Harry’s gooey hand when looks at her and says, “Mum-Mum-Mum,” in clear demand. “I think maybe I forgot that once before. I don’t want to forget it again.”

She’s just weeks away from events that will pound that lesson home for good.

* * * *

After bleeding on the Willow House’s founding stone, Lily and James have come to the point where the only thing they wish to do is spend time with their son. James can feel hours, minutes, and seconds ticking down in his head: _This leaves me with twenty-nine day, three hours, and fifty-eight seconds to spend with my son. These are the last twenty-seven days, six hours, and forty-two seconds I’ll spend with my baby._

Jewel understands their plight, though she never says so in as many words. Instead, she tells them that she’ll spend six hours a day with Harry, the better to maintain their growing rapport. James was raised to understand the practicality (and part-time ludicrousness) of Western magic as well as the interwoven and symbolic intricacies of Eastern magic. He understands the magical necessity of Jewel-as-Lily just as much as he hates it.

The other eighteen hours of every day, sleeping or waking, is for James and Lily. The house-elves from Hogwarts sneak in to clean and feed them, so there is literally nothing else to do. All that’s left is Harry.

When their son sleeps, Lily writes one more letter to Sirius, the last of their developed photographs included. James puts his boy back on his toy broom and cries while he laughs as Harry delights in the freedom of flight. Lily sits with Harry and teaches him how to count to ten on his fingers, letting him hiss out the words before insisting on baby-mumbled, hesitant English. Trying to add in his toes makes Harry pick up his own foot in confusion. He promptly rolls over onto his back, letting out a surprised squeal, and Lily laughs. James sits with Harry resting in the crook of his arm, reading from Remus’s old family copy of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_. His baby boy most often snores his way through the story about the three brothers winning the Deathly Hallows, but Harry is fascinated by “The Fountain of Fair Fortune.”

James eyes his son. “Pretty sure you’re going to make some interesting friends during your first year at Hogwarts, champ.” Harry ignores him, busy baby-cackling at the animated drawing of the fountain’s knight, stripping himself of rusted armor and trying not to fall over whilst doing so.

Lily notices, with help from Salazar to act as a translator, that Harry wants to help her brew potions. It’s mostly more Polyjuice she’s been working on, not to mention several new batches of his grandmother’s potion for curse-damage removal, but brewing the Nine Herbs is a safe lesson for a curious baby. However, Lily’s first lessons in brewing were taught to her by Snape when they were kids, and he was thorough. A brewer doesn’t start right off with making potions, Lily tells their fascinated son as his hands explore a clean, cast-iron cauldron. A brewer starts with learning their plants.

Lily takes Harry out into the garden to help with her herb beds on the next sunny day. “What’s that look for?” she asks Salazar, who is making the oddest face. James, curious, has decided he’s going to be lounging on the lawn furniture for this entire venture.

“Just…” Salazar motions for Lily to proceed. “You’ll find out.”

Within three days, every plant that Harry has “helped” is trying to die. Harry is confused, Lily is baffled, and Salazar is rolling around in the grass, howling with laughter. James does not win any points from his wife for finding the entire situation hilarious.

Lily picks up their son and steps over the ancient relic cackling like a lunatic in their garden. “Harry, sweetie, maybe we’ll just start with teaching you how to make harmless infusions, okay?”

“Mum-Mum,” Harry replies in affirmative contentment. He doesn’t care what they do as long as it’s interesting, and James is already feeling desperate. Their son has finally reached the stage where allowing him to find his own entertainment is _not_ a good idea. Dragon is still sulking about her stripe of missing fur.

No wonder James’s parents always looked so frazzled in old family photographs taken during his toddlerhood. James probably drove them mad.

Their rental owl brings them a response, sort of, to Lily’s pregnancy confession. Sirius’s letter was penned with a Dictation Quill, which struggled to interpret and write down a lot of incoherent, joyful shouting. James folds the letter closed with both of his hands shaking.

He knew Sirius would be happy. He also knows what Sirius will have to believe for twelve years.

James still can’t decide who he hates more for all of this shit: Albus, or You-Know-Who.

The closer they get to Hallowe’en, the more Jewel’s fierce protective streak reveals itself. She never hovers over Harry, never overreacts to the shenanigans a baby can get up to—that is apparently James’s job—but whenever there is any hint of danger, she has her wand ready and teeth bared in an angry snarl. Thanks to the Polyjuice, Jewel also looks exactly like Lily during those times, and it’s eerie as hell.

It’s probably for the best that Peter is _not_ going to visit until Hallowe’en. At this point, Jewel would probably kill him.

In August, James didn’t know what to make of this strange, older Pure-blood woman who moved into their cottage. Now James is heartsick at the idea that Jewel will die for Harry, and he can’t ask her not to. Not when there is only one other person who could do what needs to be done. He doesn’t know if not being able to ask makes him a good person, or a fucking terrible one.

He finally understands Snape’s dilemma, the spying and the decisions he must be making, the weight of blood and lives. James doesn’t think he has half the courage it would take to stand tall in Voldemort’s court, twisting his words to make You-Know-Who believe his faith is absolute while hiding a vicious smile behind his black eyes.

“That’s what scares me the most about You-Know-Who, I think,” Lily muses aloud, sipping tea at the kitchen table with James on a night when it’s just the two of them awake with their insomniac toddler. “If Severus didn’t try to assassinate him, it means he already knows he wouldn’t succeed—and Sev is _good_ with a wand, James. You know he is.”

James grimaces. He’s been on the opposing end of that wand often enough. “Yeah. He really is.”

Salazar later confirms Lily’s thoughts on Severus’s lack of conveniently assassinating Voldemort. “No, he truly doesn’t believe he could kill You-Know-Who. Severus Snape does not even believe a poison would succeed.” He hesitates. “I’m not even certain _I_ could defeat him, James.”

“That’s fucking terrifying,” James says bluntly.

“It is,” Salazar agrees, expression tight with concern for them, and for everyone in the Underground who is still needed out on a magical battleground in some godforsaken part of Britain. “Even if he bore no Horcruxes, You-Know-Who would still be alive and hale. To my knowledge, none have ever managed to hit him with the Killing Curse.”

After a week away, Robert returns on the eighteenth of October. “I am finally bloody twenty! I can now cease being a ridiculous teenager, and become a complete fool of an adult!”

“Well, you said it first,” Jewel murmurs under her breath, smiling when Harry applauds Robert’s wand-based burst of colorful fireworks. Lily sighs, wishes Robert a wonderful birthday, and then orders him to remove the scorch marks from her kitchen ceiling.

James holds up Harry and grins. “Say ‘Happy Birthday’ to Padfoot Two, champ.” Harry scrunches up his nose and hisses at Robert.

“Close enough for me,” Robert declares, and takes his nephew out into the back garden. Dragon, her fur growing back in odd little tufts, scurries to follow them. Aside from Lily and Harry, Robert is still her favorite.

On the twenty-fifth of October, another letter arrives from Albus. This one marks a grand total of five letters they’ve received from him the entire time they’ve been trapped in hiding. Lily reads it with her teeth bared in anger before she shows the letter to James and Sal.

James understands at once why she didn’t wait for Jewel and Robert before sharing the letter’s contents. Albus Dumbledore wants to “borrow” the Potter family’s Invisibility Cloak.

Sal frowns at the letter, but if he is as angry as Lily, he’s hiding it well. “He says he’s wanting to perform experiments to discover more of its actual nature.”

Lily shakes her head. “Aside from how much I want to kill him right now…why? If he wanted to try to replicate the Cloak’s properties for the war, he should’ve asked ages ago!”

“He suspects that it is one of the Hallows,” Sal murmurs. “He must.”

“Should we send it on, then?” James asks, crossing his arms. He isn’t all that pleased about the thought of Albus with two of the Deathly Hallows. Besides, the timing of this request isn’t just suspicious—it’s _infuriating_. That Cloak is another tool that could be used to safeguard Harry from You-Know-Who. Asking for it now, with it being so close to Hallowe’en, the day the Magical World is starting to refer to as Atrocity Day…

James clenches his jaw. Albus keeps going to the trouble of proving beyond all doubt that he wants them to die. It feels like renewed betrayal, every damned time.

“I don’t believe we’ve much choice,” Sal answers, though he doesn’t seem pleased about it. “How else would your son inherit the Cloak by way of mysterious gift-giving if it were not in someone else’s safe keeping?”

“I’m not sure I trust Albus to give it to him,” Lily mutters, scowling.

Sal nods in understanding. “If I didn’t know better, I would feel similarly, but Albus Dumbledore must actually do so. My brother would not have had it in his possession, otherwise.”

James is the logical choice to write to Albus in response, and he does so that same afternoon, still chewing on anger. He’s the one who has _always_ been seen as the loyal Gryffindor, unlike Lily and her five-year friendship with “The Enemy.” James is the one who would be seen as to never distrust Albus’s intentions.

He’ll do this because it has been done, but Albus gets nothing else from James or his family, nothing beyond what they already know he will take. Albus isn’t of the blood. He can experiment on the family Cloak all he likes, and it will grant him nothing.

When James takes the Cloak up in his hands to pack it, the fabric is warmer than usual, a strange magical thrum against his skin. James takes that as a sign of agreement that the Hallow is accepting this temporary distance from the family. After all, Death’s own Cloak knows who it really belongs to.

James’s entire letter to Albus is filled with nothing but recollections of blithe nonsense and childhood pranks in regards to the Cloak. He mentions a bit about the old family theory that their Cloak had been one of Ignotus Peverell’s inventions, hoping Albus will take the bait and be off with it.

The letter goes into the package with the Cloak, which the owl will be able to carry without difficulty. He bites his lip, reminding himself that everything will go right, that Harry _will_ survive Hallowe’en. Only then can James release the owl, watching as it flaps off into the encroaching dark.

“Fuck you, Albus,” James whispers. Tears burn his eyes, but he refuses to let them fall. “Fuck you for betraying my family.”

* * * *

Sirius takes a moment to stare at the cottage from the street. It seemed like they’d been married for about a day before the war meant they were off again, the three of them so rarely in the same place, but the cottage had felt like home the moment he, James, and Lily moved in. It’s got nothing on 12 Grimmauld Place for size, and that’s part of why Sirius loves it. Their home holds in the warmth, cradling them and their son in weathered, sturdy stone shelter, and soon—

Fuck, Lily’s going to have another baby. Fuck, fuck, fuck; Sirius still can’t handle that yet. He’s known for a month, and still he’s going gaga over the idea. Second child. Harry’s little sibling. Someone new to ride atop Padfoot during strolls through the back garden, while chubby little fingers clench onto his fur.

 _It’s after sunset. It’s Diwali_ , Sirius reminds himself, giving his head a firm shake. _Get your shit together and your arse moving before James and Lily start to believe Peter pulled a fast one and didn’t give you the current Secret Keeper’s phrase, after all._

To be honest, Sirius is surprised that Peter gave in and allowed it. Peter’s been twitchy as hell lately. The war is definitely taking a toll on his nerves. With the spy rumors—well, Sirius supposes it’s nice to know that Peter doesn’t believe that Sirius is the traitor.

After Sirius pulls on the rope to sound the door chime, the little window in the door opens and gets him a wand pointed at his face. James’s, if the shite lighting isn’t faking the spiderweb patterns on his wand.

“Uh…” Sirius practiced the Secret Keeper’s phrase, but suddenly the pronunciation has flown out of his head. “ _Duśamaṇa_ … _duśamaṇa sahi—_ fuck, wait, hold on. I can do this.” He cheats and pulls the pronunciation forth with Occlumency and a recent memory. Forgetting is never Sirius’s problem, but getting his English tongue to speak Punjabi is not great fun. Peter’s the one who’s so bloody good at mimicking. “ _Duśamaṇa sahiyōgī nahīṁ hana_.”[1]

The little window slams shut just before the door is yanked open, and James yanks Sirius into his arms. It’s like being clamped inside a steel trap, James is holding on so tight.

“Uh—missed you too, but I like breathing?” Sirius gasps.

James relents, just a little, walking backwards into the cottage so he can shut the door. “Fuck, I missed you.”

“I can tell. Except for the lack of snogging on the doorstep this time,” Sirius replies, but his _Oh, Shit_ senses are tingling. Something is off; something is wrong. Things don’t smell right in the house, a change his human nose is barely aware of. His Animagus nose would probably be informing him of everything that was not proper right now, but he doesn’t want to shift. He wants to hold his spouses, hold his kid, and just enjoy the evening. He’s had about all of the conspiracy shit he can take.

“My turn,” Lily murmurs. Sirius turns and gets wrapped in her strong embrace. “Hello, love.”

“Hello, and hello, tiny sprog,” Sirius whispers hoarsely, placing one hand on Lily’s belly where a tiny little fetus resides. “I might start crying. Just so you know.”

“Noted.” Lily sounds a bit dry and tired—and scared. Shit, he doesn’t like that last bit. “It’s a boy, by the way.”

“We’re having a boy,” Sirius repeats. “Oh, boy.”

“Exactly,” James says, followed by a wry laugh.

“Shut it, you. Just…a boy. A little boy. We’re having another son. You could’ve told me that by letter!” Sirius complains, but he isn’t really complaining at all. He likes being told in person. He likes being here to listen to these words himself.

“You’d be so disappointed, though.” Lily finally lets him go and steps back.

Sirius gets his first good look at his spouses under some proper lighting, and that _wrong_ feeling intensifies. “You two look like—” He checks for the presence of his son, who isn’t in the parlor or the entry hall. “—you look like hell, both of you!”

James smirks at him. “Flatterer.” The haunted look he’d sported during Harry’s birthday is so much fucking worse. Lily’s eyes and nose are both red, like she’s been crying often, and she’s pale and drawn. Sirius’s spouses are exhausted, stretched thin by this war and from worrying about their kid. Hell, they’ve probably been losing their minds about the Longbottoms, too, and vice versa. Nobody knows who You-Know-Sodding-Who might choose to go after. Choose to murder.

“You’re not looking so great yourself,” Lily says to Sirius, raising an eyebrow. “Is it that bad out there?”

Sirius thinks about lying, but they all promised. They weren’t going to lie to each other unless there was a damned good reason for it, and this isn’t on the list. “It’s probably worse, but I don’t want—let’s just leave it at the part where no one we closely know or are related to is recently dead, and leave it at that, okay?”

“Fair enough.” James rubs his face with one hand, clutching at Sirius’s arm with the other. Sirius hopes that whatever is wrong isn’t unsurmountable. He’s had enough of _that_ shit, too. “Look, there’s something we need to tell you. Oh—God, Padfoot, there’s so much.”

“You two act like you’re about to die,” Sirius blurts out, and then winces when Lily’s eyes promptly begin to water. “That was supposed to be a joke.”

James looks at Lily, who shakes her head while scrubbing at her eyes. “You do it. I’m a mess,” she mutters.

“Right, thanks for that.” James takes a deep breath. “Sirius. If you had to choose between believing someone dead even though they were still alive, no matter how long you had to believe it, or having that person actually be dead for real…which one?”

Sirius stares at James. “Stupid question, Prongs. First one, hands down.” He’s seen too many of their classmates, family, and friends die in this war. For him, the question is academic. “Why?”

“Just—it was important. It’s a good place to start.” James swallows hard. “Take a look around the corner. Hallway. No wand is necessary, I promise.”

Sirius looks at Lily, who is still dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief monogrammed with James’s initials, then back to James. His husband looks like he’d prefer to have a nice nervous breakdown right about now. “What the fuck, thirds?”

Lily lets out a faint snicker. “I almost forgot that one. We’ve never had enough time to get used to it—oh, God. Just do what he said, Padfoot.”

“I’d better not get hexed!” Sirius stomps his way to the hall that leads to the kitchen and freezes. “What the fuck?”

Regulus Black, dressed entirely Muggle, lifts one hand and offers Sirius a weak wave. “Hi?”

“The fuck,” Sirius says again, because he’s lost the rest of his vocabulary.

“I’m not dead.” Regulus’s voice is quiet, like maybe he’s been repeating that reassurance for a while. “I promise I’m not.”

Sirius then loses his ability to think, or take in new information except for the fact that he is hugging his taller younger brother—the arsehole _outgrew him_ , the absolute _nerve_ —who seems remarkably solid for a ghost. “You’re not. Not dead.”

“I’m faking it really well, though,” Regulus replies. “I just didn’t think…I didn’t think you’d care.”

That kick-starts Sirius’s brain again. “Didn’t think I’d care—you _imbecile!_ ” Sirius seethes at Regulus. “You’re my baby brother! Of course I’d care! Cared. Care? You’re not dead, which tense do I use?”

“I really don’t think it matters that much,” Regulus offers. “I mean…I kind of have to stay dead. For a while.”

Sirius hugs him again. “That sounds like something that should be explained over vodka, or beer, or…something potent, anyway. Why?”

Regulus sighs. “You-Know-Who is why. The Dark Mark can be used by the Dark Lord to murder any of his followers from afar. He’d only need to know I was alive, and then I wouldn’t be. Not anymore. He’d be rather upset that I’m not as dead as he believes me to be, and fix that little blunder post-haste.”

“Fuck. Right.” Sirius swallows. “I’ve seen that happen.” Just once, and it gives him screaming nightmares to match the screaming he’d heard that night from a dying Death Eater kid. Amelia Bones is one of the toughest, hardest witches Sirius has ever met, and even she’d looked disturbed.

Hagrid took Sirius up to Hogsmeade for a visit with Aberforth, whereupon Sirius had tried to match someone twice his size drink-for-drink until he blacked out for a blissful night of not dreaming about anything at all.

“Then you understand.” Regulus looks so relieved that Sirius decides to hate himself a little bit more for being such an almighty dickhead to his brother once he’d come to Hogwarts and Sorted Slytherin.

“I do, yeah. Sort of.” Sirius turns around to face James and Lily, though he hasn’t let go of Regulus’s arm. He’d like for the maybe-ghost of his brother to remain solid, thanks. “What the hell is going on?”

“First off, Harry is upstairs, asleep. He has a minder with him. You’ll meet her later.” Lily swallows so hard it looks painful. “Diwali will still happen, just…it’ll have to be later. Towards morning. After dawn. I’m—I don’t know yet.”

James speaks before Sirius’s temper can spark at the idea of a mystery sitter alone in a room with _their son._ “Introducing you to Robert was the only thing we could think of to do to drive home the point that…things have really gone tits-up, Padfoot.”

Sirius has to contend with two conflicting worries, but curiosity manages first dibs. “Robert?” he asks, glancing at Regulus.

Regulus gives Sirius a faint smile in response. “It’s currently my legal name. I’m dead, remember?”

“Right. I have a dead brother who isn’t really dead.” Sirius scrubs his face with both hands, rubs his eyes, and then shoves his hair back behind his ears. “Figuratively hit me. How is it that my brother is standing in our house?”

“That’s part of everything we need to tell you.” Lily bites her lip. “But we can’t just…there is so much, love. If you want to know the whole of it, then you have to know that there is _so much_ , and almost all of it is going to hurt. You can choose, though, right now, not to deal with how complicated things could be. You’ll have to forget that you know Robert is alive until it’s safe for you to know again, if he’s still alive when that happens. Robert says you know about the Deflection Charm.”

Sirius nods slowly. He isn’t opposed to a Deflection Charm, especially not when it will keep anyone who might invade his thoughts from discovering that his dead baby Death Eater— _former_ Death Eater brother is still alive. The Deflection Charm is spades better than being fucking Obliviated. “Or? The two of you look…you really do look like someone’s going to die.”

“Someone is,” James confirms, looking miserable. “We’re just trying to make certain it isn’t us, which is the least complicated part of the everything else Lily is referring to. It’s a normal Diwali and a mild Deflection Charm, or it’s a normal Diwali and one _hell_ of a Deflection Charm that might never end.”

Sirius feels like he’s been punched. “What the hell, Prongs? Why wouldn’t it end?”

“Because this might not work.” James sighs. “Lily and I couldn’t stand the idea of telling you nothing, Sirius. We didn’t want to leave you with the certain belief that we’d be so willing to hurt you. We don’t want you to ever truly believe that we’d forget you.”

Sirius is a curious bastard. It gets him into a lot of trouble, and always has.

That doesn’t mean he’s stupid, though. “You mean you’d tell me about all of the other whatever-it-is, and I’d agree to the second Deflection Charm. Those don’t work unless I’m willing. If I balk on you after I find out, you’ll have to Obliviate me.”

“No.” James’s voice cracks on that single word, which somehow makes that sudden, harsh syllable sound even worse. “If you don’t agree to two uses of the Deflection Charm, we don’t tell you the rest. At all. I’m not—I can’t Obliviate you, Pads. No fucking way in hell.”

Lily bites her lip. “If I had to, maybe. But I don’t want to. So it has to be a choice you make before that, Sirius, and once you say it, you have to mean it. You can’t back out afterwards, and you may want to.”

Sirius feels bile burn the back of his throat. His grip on Regulus’s sleeve is probably too tight, but his brother isn’t complaining. “Give me some signposts, here. I’d at least like a hint as to what I’d be agreeing to.”

* * * *

Salazar is not in Godric’s Hollow for the first night of Diwali. James had wanted him there, but Salazar was adamant that he and Sirius Black not yet meet. If he has to interact with Sirius Black after Hallowe’en 1995 as himself, he wants to do nothing that might trigger an early activation of any potential Deflection Charm.

James argued that there is no way for them to know that Sirius Black will agree to two uses of the Deflection Charm, especially if his temper is stirred during the reveal of Peter Pettigrew’s betrayal. Salazar countered that he and Nizar’s portrait both believe otherwise, though that is a supposition based upon a very brief bit of conversation that will take place in June of 1994. When asked how he had remained (relatively) sane during his twelve years in Azkaban, Sirius Black had responded by saying that, deep down, he must have remembered that he was innocent.

Salazar has enough knowledge of Dementors now to be aware that a memory of innocence would not be enough to shield Sirius Black from their vile ways. His Animagus form, perhaps, might have protected him thoroughly enough, making Salazar’s point moot. A Deflection Charm, though…that would confuse a Dementor, just as it would remain unnoticed by users of Mind Magic.

In the meantime, he is having a conversation he has put off for far too long.

Conversation is the wrong word. Salazar is having a bloody shouting match with Rufus Scrimgeour, and the racket is probably enough to wake the dead in the nearby family plots. “What in the entire pantheon of the gods is going through your head, Rufus?”

“Winning this war, that’s what!” Rufus yells back. “Or have you forgotten that, Saul? We have no time for coddling anyone, not now! I’ll take the fight to anyone who might be the slightest bit tempted to join You-Know-Who’s people, and the lot of them can rot in Azkaban with the Dementors for the rest of their lives!”

Salazar wants to grind his teeth. “Fucking Grindelwald dwells in a kinder prison than Azkaban, Rufus! You’ll win no allies to your side if they fear you’ll feed them to the Dementors if you catch so much as a whiff of thought that doesn’t match your own!”

Rufus’s red-blotched face enhances his gold hair, though it makes for the semblance of a very odd lion. “And that’s as it should be! If they hesitate, they might give in to fear, give up, and march right on over to join the enemy!”

“Good gods, what happened to you, Rufus?” Salazar asks, giving up on the shouting. He’s tired now, all the time. Hallowe’en is a press on his limbs, the hand of Fate coming to weigh him down as an unstoppable event readies itself to become reality.

Rufus makes as if he’s considering spitting on the floor, but restrains himself. He learned manners, but traded his open heart for a tight fist and narrow-eyed suspicion. Gods, no wonder Lucretia Prewett had seemed so utterly put out with the man. “All of the good compass points in the Wizarding World were murdered, Saul. I suppose that’s what’s happened. I want justice, and Bagnold’s way wasn’t getting it for us.”

“Neither is Fudge,” Salazar retorts. “And Barty is worse.”

“That’s just politics, the both of them,” Rufus says in dismissal. Salazar has to wonder if Rufus truly believes that, or if he will cater to two fools in order to secure his own authority within the M.L.E. “There will be time for everyone to sit around a campfire, singing songs and bloody holding hands, but _after_ the war is won. Not before. It’s time to stand firm, time to follow the law to the letter, and leave no stone unturned. Anyone who isn’t right out on the front lines, fighting for Wizarding Britain, is fighting against us.”

Salazar closes his eyes for a brief moment. “And you’ve no consideration for those caught in between?”

Rufus snorts. “No such place.”

Gods damn this.

He has been watching Rufus since Lucretia warned him, and what he has seen is the withering of a man’s kindness in the face of Voldemort’s brutality. It’s happened to others, of course—such is the nature of war. It fertilizes compassion among some, hardens others, causes some to lose themselves to apathy, and traumatizes everyone else. Rufus has never been overly doting, nor has he possessed an abundance of manners. He certainly does not speak with the compassionate political skill that Henry and others of his caliber had embodied. Rufus had still been a good person, though, one able to compromise.

The man Rufus Scrimgeour has been of late is not one to compromise. Not one to shelter a spy. Not one to ask questions before a decision is made and a spell is cast.

Rufus is no longer the sort of man that Salazar can trust with the safety of his people. Lucretia knew and recognized it before Salazar was willing to do so, which implies great things of her, but ill things of Salazar. He should have taken her at her word the moment she voiced her concerns regarding Rufus. Instead, he waited, and a few days previous, his desire to retain a long-standing ally nearly caused the death of another member of the Underground.

Salazar’s only regret is that he cannot apologize for what he must do, for using this spell that he hates. His words would be a warning that he cannot afford to grant. Instead, he waits for Rufus to be distracted by the need to fight with the cork of a wine bottle before he raises his wand.

“ _Desaprender._ ”[2]

Salazar leaves behind a man who is unchanged but for one thing: he remembers he once fought in the European Wizarding War with Henry Potter’s friend, Saul Luiz, who died in the attack on Platform 9 ¾ on first September, 1971.

He returns to Godric’s Hollow at noon on the twenty-eighth of October. His little brother is running around in the back garden with Dragon, who finally seems to have forgiven him. Robert is lying in the grass, staring up at the grey, moody October sky with a line between his brows and an expression that begs to be left alone.

Inside the cottage, Lily and James are standing in their kitchen, holding onto each other in silence. The moment James realizes they are no longer alone, he locks eyes with Salazar. “How did your errand go?”

“Like utter shit,” Salazar responds in blunt honesty. “Last night went well?”

“It…went,” Lily volunteers, pulling a wry face that does nothing to hide her exhaustion. “Sirius—”

Salazar holds up his hand. “Do not tell me what choices he made, for the same reason that I did not greet him here yesterday evening.”

Lily closes her mouth, her eyes burning with disgruntled agreement for which he blames her not at all. If they stood in opposite places, he would be similarly frustrated.

“Then we’ll just say we didn’t leave any loopholes,” James says. “Robert’s already asked that if he doesn’t survive the war to see Sirius again, that we…not tell him. That we leave his death marked as third November of last year.”

Salazar shakes his head. “I understand the choice, though I find I’m not fond of it.”

“Same.” James runs his hand through his unruly hair. “It’s so close now, Sal. It’s just so fucking close. What the hell do we do?”

Salazar would truly love to have better words for them. Instead, all he can offer is, “Survive.”

* * * *

Lily has Harry perched on her hip as she uses her free hand to pick through her vinyl collection—well, the magical copies of her collection, anyway. They play the same, and they feel the same, but it isn’t the same. However, leaving the Aurors to investigate a house empty of personal belongings would be a big, screaming hint that maybe things weren’t as straightforward as they seemed.

Everything is far too complicated lately. She hates it.

No, that’s not right. Things have been far too complicated for a long time. She just didn’t want to admit it. Admitting that she was surrounded by problems meant she had to try to fix them, and by God, Lily didn’t even know where to begin at age eleven. She’s older now, and she knows some things, learned others with hindsight, but that “Age brings Wisdom” saying is complete shit.

Lily doesn’t feel wise. She’s just so bloody angry, so her son and these vinyl copies are going to soothe her stupid nerves. Hallowe’en is so close it feels like it’s squeezing in, all around her, and she isn’t going to spend her last days in her home, with her baby, angry at the world.

“Pink Floyd. We haven’t listened to this one yet, have we, Harry?” Lily asks, holding up the album cover for her son to see.

Harry gazes at it with his eyes narrowed and his little nose wrinkled before shaking his head. “Fi?” he asks, pointing to the poor bloke on fire. Lily hadn’t understood the symbolism in 1975. She gets it now.

“Yes, fire. But don’t worry. It’s pretend. Or maybe it’s magic fire and they’re just not telling us,” Lily replies, using charms to drop the vinyl from its cover and float it over to the turntable. The turntable is her original from home, and it has to stay behind. It’s such an inconsequential thing, but it was a gift from her parents. It’s yet another loss that hurts already.

“Maybe Remus will rescue it,” Lily mutters, directing her wand to settle the needle onto the record. The last part of “Have a Cigar” begin playing, so her aim wasn’t that bad.

“Moon,” Harry says, recognizing his godfather’s name.

“Yes, that’s our Moony.” Lily smiles as the opening chords of the title track begin to play. “You know, when I was younger, this was my best friend’s favorite song from the entire album. I liked ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ better, but…but maybe he already knew that things were turning sour. Or maybe he liked it because he understood it. I didn’t. I hated it—thought it was daft and depressing.”

Lily guides them across the parlor in gentle, swaying little circles as Harry holds on to her and grins. He was always soothed by Lily swaying in time with music when he was still a tiny bundle in her arms. She honestly doesn’t know why she stopped, but she picked up the habit again after August.

She sings the last part of the song without really thinking about it. Those are the only lyrics she has memorized.

Harry reaches up and wipes the first tear off her cheek. “Mum-Mum.”

“Oh, am I leaking? How rude of me,” Lily says with wobbly dryness, and sniffs hard. She doesn’t want to cry right now. If Harry can ever again think of her at all, this isn’t what Lily wants him to remember. “Shall we listen to that one again? I’ll try not to leak this time.”

Harry gives her his suspicious little toddler expression, like she’s just offered him a bitter potion disguised as a lolly. Then he nods.

“Okay.” Lily lifts and resettles the turntable’s arm with her finger. “Maybe this time I’ll remember more of the words. Then we can both sing them. Okay?”

“Mum-Mum,” Harry agrees, smiling again.

There are politics _everywhere_. Severus said that to her the first time they listened to this album. Lily tries to smile reassurance at her little boy while wondering if she’ll ever be able to figure out all of the politics involved in handing your child off to fate.

* * * *

On the thirtieth of October, Lily cries herself to sleep while James holds her in his arms. It’s the last night they’ll spend together in this house, in this bed. Harry sleeps in a snuggled little bundle next to Lily, oblivious of his mother’s grief.

James lies awake far into the night, watching the familiar shadows cast by tree limbs sway across the ceiling. He commits everything to memory, even the way Lily breathes, loud and stoppered up from too many tears. He holds her close, rolls over onto his side so he can rest his hand on Harry’s tiny little shoulder. His son’s skin burns through his pyjamas to paint James’s palm, a mark he wants to make real and carry for the rest of his life.

This night is for them. Tomorrow is their return to war.

[1] Punjabi: “Enemies are not allies.”

[2] Castilian: “Unlearn.” i.e. the Castilian version of Obliviate.

**Author's Note:**

> I lurk on tumblr @deadcatwithaflamethrower


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